Bombs from all sides and jets overhead: Inside Idlib, Syria’s final war frontier

The displaced are sheltering beneath the trees of the olive groves of Idlib province. They are also massed at the camps alongside the border with Turkey, but they seem to fill every rocky crevice of the fields surrounding them.

They sleep in caves, but also pitch makeshift tents alongside the borders of wheat and barley fields. They fill the skeletons of half-built apartment blocks, and have erected rickety shelters along the walls of factories and on the slopes of rocky hills, using them as shields against the late winter winds.

Hundreds of families of those displaced by Syria’s war and president Bashar al-Assad’s onslaught fill the carpark and basements of a concrete football stadium at the centre of Idlib city.

“I want to return to my home,” Hosna Abdullah Mustafa, who arrived at the stadium with her children and husband a week ago from Jabal Zawiya, in northwest Syria, tells The Independent during a rare visit to the war-ravaged corner of Syria.

Mustafa and her family fled their ancestral home after the Assad regime’s capture of the rural highlands where she hails. It has since been recaptured by the rebels, but remains contested. “I don’t want food or money. I don’t want to go to Europe. I just want safety for my kids.”

Up above, fighter jets roar. One makes a contrail half circle, like a menacing smile in the blue-grey sky. The thuds of distant airstrikes and artillery shells rumble, growing more intense as dusk approaches. Hours later, Russia and Turkey would announce a new ceasefire deal to take effect at midnight, one of many that have been declared over the years before collapsing within hours or days.

As the country’s war approaches its tenth year, the Assad regime has captured from rebels all but slivers of northern Syria, and appears determined to reconquer the rebel-controlled northwest. Its offensive, backed by Russian air power and Iranian-supported militias, has prompted Syrians living in Idlib, many displaced from other parts of the country, to flee for their lives. The UN estimates that almost 900,000 people have been displaced since the start of the assault in December.

Turkey has cited the burgeoning humanitarian crisis in Idlib and the potential for a fresh tide of refugees entering across its borders for its decision to briefly allow what is claims are hundreds of thousands of migrants to gather at the Greek frontier in an attempt to get across to Europe, triggering alarm in Brussels and other Western capitals.

The Independent’s trip into Idlib, with the permission of Turkish authorities, was monitored by the National Salvation Government, the Turkish-backed umbrella authority overseeing governance, security and humanitarian affairs in fragments of Syria under the control of rebel forces.

But though he kept a close eye on us, our minder granted us freedom of mobility and permitted us to hire our own local translator, a local journalist, and driver during a day-long visit that included a trip to Idlib city and some surrounding towns that make up the last rebel-held region of Syria not under the dominion of Turkey or Kurdish rebels in the northeast.

What emerges is a region utterly devastated by an enveloping war, where nearly everyone had been displaced, sometimes numerous times, and no lives have been untouched by multiple tragedies.

The militant factions backed by Turkey as well as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a federation of armed groups that include one faction that previously was loyal to al-Qaeda, have a presence in Idlib. So too do hundreds of thousands of civilian men, women and children living ordinary lives.

“Life is OK,” insists Mazen Qusara, a jeweller at the main market in Idlib. “But I am afraid,” he says, gesturing towards the kalashnikov assault rifle he keeps in the corner of his shop. Once thieves made off with five kilograms of his family’s gold. “I am afraid that my jewellery will be stolen again. I am afraid of an airstrike. I am afraid that the glass from the store display will shatter and badly injure me.”

Outside his shop, downtown Idlib, capital of the province, bustles with the rhythms of daily life typical in a small Arab city. A motorcyclist with his wife and child perched precariously behind him zoom past the city’s clocktower square. Koranic music blares from a car speaker.

Kebab and pastry shops rush to fill orders. Fruit vendors call out prices for bright red tomatoes and orange tangerines that stand out from the grey background.

There is no phone reception, but entrepreneurs have wired central Idlib with wifi, selling cards to allow people to surf the web and message loved ones abroad and across the rest of Syria while sipping tea. Young men complain of boredom and joblessness.

“There’s no work and everything is expensive,” says Bilal Mahfoudh, a 23-year-old.

Fatma Maqdi, a maths teacher, browses a toy store with her three children. Her two oldest have already made it to Germany, where they are studying. Her husband, an accountant, is unemployed which makes life a struggle. But she is mostly terrified for her two fresh-faced teenage daughters and her 11-year-old son.

Dozens of her relatives and friends have been displaced or killed, devastating what was once a thriving Syrian middle class in the town.

“I just want to be able to stay at my home and not be displaced,” she says. “But if the borders open I want to immigrate to a western country.”

On 25 February, a bomb struck the al-Barayeem primary school in Idlib city, killing three adults. Since then, all classes across Idlib have been suspended, and children find themselves idle during the day. Teachers like Maqdi find themselves without work. In neighbourhoods, children roam the streets, kicking footballs, or playing cops and robbers, but many say they’d rather be in school.

“Before the attack, there was an emergency plan where we would have lessons for a few hours a day,” says Suleyman Suleyman, a 24-year-old Arabic teacher at the school that was bombed. “But after the bombing there has been no school. Kids don’t want to come. Parents don’t want them to go. They are afraid of coming here, and some of their teachers are dead.”

The Assad regime and its Russian backers had mostly refrained from targeting the city of Idlib for years. But as we drive around the city and its surroundings, we find few places untouched by recent disasters. In the town of al-Fua, north of Idlib, an airstrike struck four day earlier, destroying an apartment block and killing nine. All of them had been displaced from other parts of Syria, say neighbours. “We heard an aeroplane in the sky and then there was an airstrike,” says Yousef Ramadan, a 46-year-old whose home was badly damaged by the blast, which blew out all of his doors and windows.

In the city of Idlib, an airstrike hit a residential neighbourhood, killing several children who were playing in the street at around 10.30am.

“They were my relatives,” says Mohammed, an 11-year-old who knew the dead children. “It feels awful.”

At the Idlib football stadium where hundreds of families from rural stretches of Idlib, Aleppo and Hama provinces are sheltering, women living in a makeshift dormitory are eager to tell their stories. Samia Moahmed Dakhoul, 76, came here a month ago from Jabal Zawiya, escaping after three of her children were killed in an airstrike. The family still has not been able to return and give them a proper burial.

“Their bodies are still lying in the rubble,” she says. She is dressed in black, and her lips tremble and eyes water as she speaks.

“We don’t want to go Europe,” says Hadeel Basil, a 40-year-old from Kafroun. “We don’t want money. We want homes and schools for our children. Ten years my children are without school.”

Some Syrians say they have become used to the constant rumble of explosions that punctuate daily life here. But our driver, Saer, from the town of Binnish, north of Idlib, says he still can’t sleep because of the bombing. He has an eight-year-old boy who is developing vision problems because of stress. “He’s always afraid of missiles,” he tells us. A friendly man of 40, he speaks as he navigates streets and highways filled with cars, trucks and motorcycles racing across the province.

Turkey’s intervention in Syria escalated after a 27 February attack on its forces that left dead 33 soldiers garrisoned at a ceasefire observation post in Idlib. Turkey says it has destroyed more than a dozen regime fighters jets, helicopters, and drones as well as scores of tanks, artillery, armoured vehicles and nine weapons depots.

That may have improved the position of the rebel fighters battling Assad. The recent Turkish intervention appears to have united rebel factions that often fought each other over turf.

Though they have put aside their differences, there is little doubt among civilians and experts that HTS is the dominant player in Idlib. Asked whether he was a member of the controversial group that includes a former al-Qaeda affiliate, our minder, a 25-year-old former rebel fighter, paused before answering, “yanni”, which in this case basically means, “kind of”.

One group of rebels, affiliated with the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, tells The Independent, they were making advances, recapturing towns that had recently been under the control of the regime.

“Assad is no longer able to move as he was able to before,” says a commander who gives his name as Assadollah, standing outside a military outpost in Binnish.

He says he just returned from the battle to recapture Saraqeb, a crucial town along the contested M4 highway. He is 35 but looks more like 50 years old. “All the weapons that the Turkish are using against the Assad regime are better than what we have.”

But physicians and civil defence workers in Idlib say advances on the ground don’t necessarily improve the lives of civilians, and there is some evidence suggesting that as it has lost ground in rural areas, the Assad regime has stepped up attacks with medium-range rockets and airstrikes that can reach areas that were relatively safe even last summer.

The result has been panic and frenetic motion on the ground. Few even have an idea how many people are displaced in Idlib because of the constant movement. “There is a number but it is changing,” says Shaza Barakat, a Syrian opposition politician, who we run into at the Idlib stadium. “People are still displaced. But they are displaced from one place to another multiple times and we can’t keep track. Of course we don’t have enough resources to keep up with them.”

Displacement offers little safety. Saleh Ahmed Taish, 42, had owned a fish farm in rural Hama province, investing thousands of dollars to build a successful business for himself, his wife, and three children. They fled to Idlib about a year ago, fleeing a ground and air offensive backed by Russia and Iran. They wound up among six families at a chicken farm outside the town of Maarat Misrin, living in a tent and cooking outdoors.

The first airstrike came early on Thursday morning at around 2am, when everyone was asleep. “There were aeroplanes,” says Taish recovering from grave wounds to his head and torso at a hospital in Idlib. “Then everything caved in.”

A neighbour pulled him to safety. Then another airstrike struck, killing the good samaritan, and at least 15 others.

His son survived the attack with serious injuries. His wife, two daughters, father and mother died, but neither the doctors nor his relatives have the heart to tell him, for fear it would jeopardise his chances of recovery. He refuses to sleep, despite being implored by his doctors and brothers and cousins at his bedside.

“My son was here, but now he’s OK,” he says. “When I see the rest of my family I can finally rest.”