Citizens in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib staged a protest on Wednesday after the Bashar Assad regime targeted camps hosting internally displaced civilians in the region near the Turkish border.
In an effort to draw attention to the regime’s and its supporters’ deadly attacks on civilians, Syrians came together for a demonstration at the Maram camp where nine civilians were killed and more than 70 people were wounded when regime forces, aided by Russian warplanes, pounded the area with shelling and bombs last weekend.
The protestors carried signs in English and Arabic that read "Children and civilians are not targets," "Stop the war," "You killed innocent children, who will you kill next?", "No to attacks on civilians" and "Children of the camp murdered before the world."
Many civilians were killed in the strikes on the Maram camp, which is supervised by the U.N., one of the protestors Mahir Ibrahim told an Anadolu Agency (AA) reporter.
"Despite this camp being a safe zone, children, innocents, women and elderly people were targeted," Ibrahim said.
Another protestor, Halid al-Sellum, recalled being woken up early in the morning to the sound of the Assad regime’s bombs.
"It was a massacre," al-Sellum said.
More than 4 million people live in the densely populated opposition-held northwest area along the Turkish border. Most of them were driven there by successive Russian-led campaigns that regained territory seized by the opposition.
Assad's regime and its ally Russia have regularly targeted hospitals and civilian areas since the start of the war in 2011.
The Idlib region is one of the last pockets to oppose Damascus. For years, the Assad regime has ignored the needs and safety of the Syrian people, only eyeing further territory gains and crushing the opposition. With this aim, the regime has for years bombed civilian facilities such as schools, hospitals and residential areas, causing the displacement of almost half of the country's population.
A fragile truce brokered nearly three years ago between Russia and Türkiye, which supports opposition groups, ended the fighting within a few months.
More than a million people have fled the Assad regime’s offensive yet it still frequently carries out attacks on civilians, hindering most from returning to their homes and forcing them to stay in makeshift camps.
With the help of Russia and Iran, Assad has turned the tide of a war that has lasted more than a decade and regained most of the territory he lost to the opposition.
Reactions grow
Following the attack, both the Syrian Opposition Coalition and the Syrian Interim Government, along with Türkiye and the European Union, released statements of condemnation.
"The regime has dangerously increased violence with its latest attacks," the Syrian Opposition Coalition warned in its statement. "The Assad regime’s said attack constitutes a war crime," it argued and accused the international community of remaining silent in the face of the regime’s violations.
Ankara too denounced the deadly strike and called on concerned parties to comply with the agreements and end attacks on civilians. "Such attacks undermine efforts to preserve calm and worsen the humanitarian situation in the region," the country's Foreign Ministry said.
The EU's reaction came on Wednesday.
"The EU condemns in the strongest terms the shelling of camps for displaced people," a spokesperson for the bloc said.
"The EU calls on the regime and its allies to stop indiscriminate military attacks and to respect humanitarian law. These incidents must be investigated without delay and those responsible must be held accountable," he said.
He also reiterated the EU's call for a "nationwide cease-fire" and advocated "a political solution to the conflict in line with U.N. Security Council Resolutions."