Syrian Regime Forced 130,000 To Leave Homes In 2018

Fahad Shabbir (@FahadShabbir) Published December 17, 2018 | 07:19 PM

Syria's Assad regime and its allies have forced approximately 130,000 people to migrate through fierce attacks and blockades from cities it captured this year, Anadolu reported on Monday.

ANKARA, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Dec, 2018 ) :Syria's Assad regime and its allies have forced approximately 130,000 people to migrate through fierce attacks and blockades from cities it captured this year, Anadolu reported on Monday.

On the occasion of International Migrants Day (Dec. 18), Anadolu Agency collected data from local sources that suggests that 2018 -- for Syrians -- would be remembered as a year of displacement and forced migration.

Although opposition-held areas of Damascus, Homs, Daraa and Quneitra were all designated "de-escalation zones" (in line with earlier agreements signed in Astana), this did not stop the regime from attacking and blockading them, and forcing numerous residents to leave their homes.

Syrians in these regions who remain opposed to the regime were relocated to refugee camps in the country's north, where they continue to face difficult living conditions.

According to data collected by the Syria Intervention Coordinators, a local NGO devoted to helping civilians, the regime and its allies have forced as many as 128,926 people to leave their homes in the period from March 14 of this year to July 31.

Almost 74,000 people in Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, and Eastern Qalamun near the Lebanese border (regarded as a symbol of anti-regime resistance) were forcibly relocated to opposition-held safe zones in Aleppo and Idlib.

With another 9,250 relocated from the opposition-held Yarmouk Camp's Yelde, Yelda, Babila and Beit Sham settlements, the total number of those forced to leave opposition-held areas of Damascus this year has now reached 83,214.

Following a lengthy blockade, 35,648 local residents were forced to leave rural areas of northern Homs to opposition-held areas in Idlib and Aleppo in the period from May 7 to 18.