Russian warplanes last week targeted the water pumping facility that gives life to northwestern Syria's opposition bastion Idlib, leaving the facility badly damaged to the point where the area could not be supplied with water.
Although Russia and the regime forces stated that they targeted the armed militant groups that controlled the region in their airstrikes and did not carry out attacks against civilians, what happened in the last week proves the opposite.
"The Russians are focusing on infrastructure and economic facilities, which adds to the suffering of the people," officials in Idlib said.
A senior United Nations official who confirmed the water station was "badly damaged" in an airstrike said such attacks worsened the humanitarian plight of millions of displaced Syrians.
"Continued destruction of civilian infrastructure will only cause more suffering of civilians. Attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure must stop," Mark Cutts, the U.N.'s deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria said in a tweet.
Russia has remained silent as the Syrian regime constantly accused Turkey of black propaganda over the water and electricity cuts in the region. It conveyed criticisms to Turkey for the interruptions in the region and expressed this issue in meetings at the general level.
While the electricity used in the pumping of the water going to the Hassakeh region from the Allouk Water Facility comes from the dams under the control of the regime, the PKK/YPG terrorist organization and the regime forces punish the people of the region by constantly cutting the electricity. Despite all the adversities, Turkey brought generators and started the pumps so that the people of Hassakeh would not be without water.
According to the opposition aircraft observatory, the Arshani water distribution and pumping station was rendered unusable after Russian Su-34 warplanes bombed the facility located near Idlib's city center on Jan. 2.
Russian jets bombed areas near the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib on Sunday, marking a new year flare-up for the last opposition-held bastion.
Warplanes, said to be Russian Sukhoi jets by tracking centers, flew at high altitudes and dropped bombs on several towns and the main water pumping station serving the overcrowded city of Idlib, whose wider population is more than a million.
There has been a relative lull in airstrikes since November after a renewed Russian-led campaign followed by Turkish army reinforcements inside the enclave raised the prospect of a wider resumption of violence.
A deal brokered nearly two years ago between Russia, which backs Bashar Assad's forces, and Turkey, which supports opposition groups, ended fighting that had displaced more than a million people within a few months.
Despite this, Idlib continues to suffer at the hands of the Bashar Assad regime and its backer Russia. Both are determined to recapture the last opposition stronghold and normalize political relations with regional countries, particularly within the scope of steps already taken with several Arab countries.
The Idlib region is home to nearly 3 million people, two-thirds of them displaced from other parts of the country.
Nearly 75% of the total population in the opposition-held Idlib region depends on humanitarian aid to meet their basic needs, as 1.6 million people continue to live in camps or informal settlements, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
