Deadly fighting: UN: Thousands fled fighting in northwest Syria

According to the United Nations, around 14,000 people have been displaced in the area around Idlib and west of Aleppo since Wednesday due to intense fighting in northwest Syria.

The situation is worsening, especially for the civilian population, said David Carden, deputy regional UN coordinator for humanitarian aid in Syria, to the German Press Agency. “We are receiving reports of children with multiple injuries from shrapnel,” he said.

Dead after incident on university grounds

These are the heaviest fighting in years between Islamist rebels and government troops in northwest Syria. Four people were killed in a recent attack by Islamist militants on a university campus in Aleppo on Friday, according to the Syrian state agency Sana and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The victims are said to be students. The rebels rejected this claim.

The fighting began on Wednesday after an alliance of Islamist rebels said they had launched an offensive called “deterring aggression.” It was a response to previous artillery shelling by the Syrian government on civilian targets, the Observatory reported.

Already more than 240 dead

According to activists, at least 242 people have been killed since Wednesday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights based in Great Britain said that 24 of them were civilians. The information could not initially be independently verified.

In response to the offensive, the Syrian army has since attacked more than 60 targets in Idlib and the Aleppo area with the support of Russian fighter jets.

The devastating civil war in Syria has completely divided the country. Ruler Bashar Al-Assad came under heavy pressure at times, but with the help of his allies Russia and Iran, he now controls two-thirds of the country again. The northwest is partly under the control of opposition forces. There is no political solution to the conflict in sight.