A12 eZ m2 the washington post.thursday, february 20 , 2020
have been displaced, according
to Misty Buswell, t he Middle E ast
policy director for the group.
Because of the “insecurity, and
the closeness of the front lines to
the aid effort,” t he group and its
partners have been forced to
suspend activities at some relief
facilities and move ambulance
fleets.
A recent effort by the group to
register aid recipients was sus-
pended because of nearby shell-
ing, Buswell said.
Most of the Syrian employees
have continued their aid work,
picking up where they left off in
the areas where they have set-
tled, she said. Their persever-
ance, she said, “still gives you
some kind of hope.”
But the work is becoming
more grueling by the day.
Doctors now struggle to treat
patients after dozens of hospitals
and other health facilities were
destroyed, damaged or aban-
doned. There are shortages of
medicine and medical supplies
as well as facilities for special-
ized care. Idlib has only one
cancer center, and as the security
situation worsened, it was diffi-
cult for m any patients to reach it,
said physician Mazen Kewara of
the Syrian American Medical
Society.
Some of the nearly 2,000 doc-
tors and other medical personnel
who work for the group have
been displaced, and “it is not easy
to find them,” he said. “It’s the
worst situation I’ve faced in eight
years.”
[email protected]saeed eido in gaziantep and sarah
Dadouch in beirut contributed to this
report.mass of terrified residents fleeing
air and artillery strikes toward
the Turkish border.
The movements of people have
been seismic: On Tuesday, Turkey
said 150,000 people had surged
toward the frontier in a six-day
period.
As they navigated battlefields
and sought out settlements of the
dispossessed, the Syrian aid
workers enjoyed few of the trap-
pings commonly associated with
large-scale international relief e f-
forts.
They did not travel in convoys
of armored vehicles. There were
no specially chartered planes to
whisk them to the crisis zone or
away from the violence.
The trials faced by one Syrian
aid organization, Violet, were
typical.
During a previous government
offensive, in June, three of the
group’s paramedics were killed,
along with a patient, when an
airstrike hit their ambulance in
the town of Maarat al-Numan,
according to Kutaiba Sayed Issa,
Violet’s general manager.
In the current crisis, Violet
staff members and volunteers
have been displaced, including a
man who was responsible for
securing housing for some 7,
displaced families.
“ He knew every empty house,”
Issa said. “Now this guy is in a
tent.”
Half a dozen aid agencies said
that scores of their volunteers or
employees had become home-
less.
International organizations
were affected as well.
At least 15 percent of Syrian
staff members working for the
International Rescue Committeebeen just as vulnerable as the
people they serve.
Paramedics have been killed
after freeing survivors f rom rub-
ble. Shelling or airstrikes have
injured doctors and nurses dur-
ing their rounds. Homeless aid
workers have slept i n their offic-
es as towns emptied and their
families fled, staying behind to
help stragglers or the stubborn.
“The people who help people
need help,” Smoudi said.
Relief efforts have been sty-
mied by ongoing security con-
cerns, the struggles of the Syri-
an aid workers and “the sheer
magnitude of the humanitarian
needs which continue to rise by
the minute,” said David Swan-
son, spokesman for the U.N.
Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs in Ga-
ziantep, a Turkish city near the
border with Syria.
The United Nations is “com-
pletely dependent on more than
10,000 aid workers in Idlib, many
of whom themselves have been
displaced,” Swanson said. “If they
are not working, it undermines
the overall response.”
T he magnitude of the crisis
has seemed to grow, exponential-
ly, every week.
The most recent U.N. tally said
that 900,000 people have been
displaced in Idlib and areas of
Aleppo since Dec. 1. Among them
were 500 ,000 children, accord-
ing to UNICEF.
A t least 2 99 civilians have
been killed since the beginning o f
the year, with 93 percent of the
deaths caused by Syrian govern-
ment forces, the United Nations
said. At least 77 children were
killed or injured in the same time
period, UNICEF said, while m anyBY KAREEM FAHIMGAZIANTEP, TurkEy — As aid
workers rushed around Syria’s
Idlib province in recent days to
help its war-battered people sur-
vive, a Syrian relief agency was
scrambling to save another
struggling group: its own em-
ployees.
They have been left homeless
and in search of cover from a
brutal winter and an unforgiving
military advance against the last
pocket of rebel resistance to
Syria’s government after nine
years of war.
Nearly a third o f the 1,000 s taff
members or volunteers working
for the organization, Ihsan Relief
and Development, have been dis-
placed by fighting over the past
few months, said Baraa Al-
Smoudi, the group’s executive
director. But there was nowhere
to put them, as desperate civil-
ians filled apartment blocks,
mosques and sports halls and
even took shelter under trees.
“We are thinking of building a
camp,” Smoudi said.
It w as the latest measure of the
misery in Idlib, where hundreds
of people have been killed and
nearly 1 million r esidents uproot-
ed during a rapid military offen-
sive by Syrian government forces
backed by air power from their
ally, Russia.
The global response to the
humanitarian catastrophe in
Idlib relies almost entirely on
Syrian aid workers, to feed peo-
ple, tend to the injured and find
shelter for the displaced.
But as suffering has spread in
northwest Syria — with a speed
and ferocity that few had antici-
pated — the aid workers have
The World
geRMANY
8 killed in 2 attacks in
town near Frankfurt
At least eight people were
killed and five i njured in two
shooting attacks in the western
Germany town o f Hanau on
Wednesday night, sending police
on a large-scale hunt for t he
gunman. The suspected shooter
was f ound dead in h is home
hours later, p olice said.
Officers discovered the suspect
and a nother b ody a t the s ame
address, police s aid in a tweet
posted around 5 a.m. local time.
They d idn’t p rovide a ny
additional information b ut said
there were “ no i ndications of
further perpetrators.”
Police also s aid they couldn’t
provide details on t he attacker’s
motive, but German n ews reports
said the s hootings targeted two
hookah cafes in Hanau, w hich is
about 15 m iles east of Frankfurt.
Shots were fired a t two
different locations in the t own
around 10 p.m., police said.
The first shooting took p lace a t
a hookah b ar called “ Midnight,”
according to German news
reports. Three people were shot
dead there, l ocal broadcaster
Hessenschau reported.
Shortly t hereafter, f ive people
were shot d ead i n the Kesselstadt
area just west of t he town c enter.
German police this w eek said
they had arrested 12 members
o f a far-right group planning
attacks on mosques and targets
associated with refugees and
migrants.
— Loveday M orris
a nd Reis T hebaultiRAQAllawi seeks approval
of p roposed cabinetIraqi Prime Minister-designate
Mohammed Ta wfiq Allawi said
Wednesday he has put together a
cabinet of political independents
and c alled on parliament to hold
an extraordinary session next
week to grant it a vote o f
confidence.
Iraq is facing a d omestic crisis,
with nearly 5 00 people having
been killed s ince Oct. 1 as
protesters demand the ouster of
what they see as a corrupt r uling
elite and an end to foreign
interference, mainly by Iran and
the United States.
Allawi said in a t elevised
speech that if his government
wins a confidence v ote, its f irstact would be t o investigate the
killing of protesters a nd bring the
perpetrators to justice.
He a lso promised to hold an
early e lection f ree f rom “the
influence of m oney, w eapons and
foreign interference,” a nd called
on protesters to give h is
government a chance.
A former communications
minister, Allawi was d esignated
premier by President Barham
Salih on Feb. 1 a fter months o f
squabbling by lawmakers f rom
rival parties, but protesters
immediately rejected h im a s a
stooge o f the political e lite.
Outgoing prime minister Adel
Abdul Mahdi urged l eaders to
quickly approve Allawi’s cabinet.
The protests f orced Abdul Mahdi
to quit in November, b ut h e
stayed on a s a caretaker.
— R eutersAFgHANistANKhalilzad and Ghani
discuss Taliban dealU.S. s pecial envoy Zalmay
Khalilzad and Afghan President
Ashraf G hani o n Wednesday
discussed a U.S. deal with Ta liban
militants on a w eek-long
reduction in violence, m eeting
the d ay a fter G hani was declared
the w inner of a disputed election.
The Afghan presidential p alace
quoted Ghani a s telling Khalilzad
he had held “effective” meetings
with local leaders on h ow the
Afghan government would
handle the p eace process.
The U.S.-Taliban deal w as
struck i n protracted negotiations
in t he Q atari c apital, Doha, a nd
was a nnounced Friday after a
meeting b etween Secretary ofState Mike Pompeo, G hani a nd
Defense Secretary Mark T. E sper
in Munich.
Khalilzad, w ho has led talks
with the Ta liban on a U.S. troop
withdrawal a greement, briefed
Ghani o n the s teps t hat would be
taken a fter the r eduction-in-
violence agreement c omes into
force. A fghanistan’s a cting
interior minister had said
Tuesday that would happen in t he
next five days, even as clashes
between the Ta liban a nd Afghan
security forces c ontinued.
The statement f ollowing the
Khalilzad-Ghani m eeting d id not
mention t he Afghan president’s
reelection, which i s disputed by
several of h is opponents. The
United S tates has not yet formally
congratulated G hani o n his
reelection f or five more years.
— R eutersDigestIn Syria’s Idlib, aid workers are among those su≠ering
As government forces press their offensive, locals who form backbone of global humanitarian response are being killed, injured and displaced
Photos by burak kara/agence France-Presse/getty Imagesdents had long braced for a
calamity.
The government of Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad has
vowed to retake all the country’s
remaining rebel-held territory
and defeat opposition militias in
Idlib, including extremist mili-
tants linked to al-Qaeda who
largely control the province.
By the time the latest govern-
ment offensive started, in De-
cember, there were more than
3 million people in Idlib, includ-
ing hundreds of thousands of
people who had been displaced
from other parts of Syria.
Over the past few weeks, the
Syrian army has stormed up
Idlib’s eastern flank, sending abelieve the number may be sig-
nificantly higher.
The crisis has reached a “hor-
rifying new level,” Mark Low-
cock, the U.N. undersecretary for
humanitarian affairs, said in a
statement Monday. Families who
are fleeing “indiscriminate”
v iolence are “traumatized and
forced to sleep outside in freez-
ing temperatures because camps
are full,” he said.
“Mothers burn plastic to keep
children warm. Babies and small
children are dying because of the
cold.”
The relief operation is sizable,
he added, but it also is over-
whelmed.
Aid agencies and Idlib’s resi-TOP: A girl runs down a hill at a Humanitarian Relief Foundation
refu gee camp in Idlib province in northwest Syria. ABOVE:
Families wait in line Wednesday for humanitarian aid in Idlib.
Nearly a third of the 1,0 00 staff members or volunteers working for
one aid group, Ihsan Relief and Development, have been displaced
by fighting over the past few months. “The people who help people
need help,” said Baraa Al-Smoudi, the group’s executive director.