‘We are left to face death alone’
When the forces of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria destroyed and took control of my city of Aleppo, its residents, including my family, were forced to flee to the northwestern Idlib province. The pattern repeated after every military assault by the Syrian regime on cities and towns outside its control. Idlib became the sanctuary for about four million people.
Relentless aerial bombardment by the Assad regime and its Russian allies and a devastating ground offensive have displaced more than half a million people from Idlib since December, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
In the past few weeks, the attacks on the people trapped in Idlib have severely intensified. The White Helmets, the civil defense group, documented more than 6,600 attacks that killed 208 civilians in January.
I am a Syrian filmmaker traveling in the United States for work. I watch the news from Syria on my phone. An image appears repeatedly: a straight road stretching to the horizon, packed with cars and trucks filled with families fleeing from the city of Ma’arat al-Nu’man in southern Idlib. Ma’arat al-Nu’man is the latest place to be turned into a ghost town by Russian and regime bombs, pushing about 110,000 people from there. [Continue reading…]