News
Assad regime launches offensive to recapture southern Syria
The Syrian regime has began a military campaign to retake the remaining rebel-held areas of Deraa and Quneitra in southern Syria.
The offensive started last week when the Syrian regime deployed artillery and rockets to attack rebel-held towns, and continued over the weekend with the arrival of Russian airplanes bombing opposition-held areas. Regime forces subsequently captured two villages in Daraa province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has called the Russian airstrikes “intense,” have caused 12,000 people to be displaced from Daraa province since they began. The UN has warned that fighting is putting the lives of 750,000 people in the south in danger. Jordan, which is deeply concerned by the escalation, said it was engaged in intensive diplomacy with Washington and Moscow to preserve the deescalation zone and prevent a mass exodus of refugees to its border. Jordanian government spokeswoman Jumana Ghunaimat said that Jordan, which already houses 650,000 registered UN refugees, “cannot receive more”.
The Syrian regime has also taken control of an abandoned UN post in the no-man’s land between the Israeli and Syrian areas of the Golan Heights. The UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) post is meant to be free of both Israeli and Syrian troops according to the cessation of hostilities agreement between the two countries following the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
The IDF said in a statement that it was “aware of what is taking place, and views [the takeover of the site and] the infrastructure work at the post as a serious and flagrant violation of the separation-of-forces agreement”.
The US has warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian allies that violations of the de-escalation zone agreed last year would have “serious repercussions” and pledged “firm and appropriate measures”. However, it has told Syrian rebel factions they should not expect US military support.
UK Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt said he was “deeply concerned by the reports of air and artillery attacks by the Assad regime against the de-escalation area in south-west Syria, leading to civilian deaths and displacements in recent days”.
He added that a military offensive by the regime in this area “would constitute a flagrant violation of the ceasefire and de-escalation agreement reached by Russia, the United States and Jordan last November and which the UK has supported” and “risks a humanitarian crisis”.