200,000 displaced Syrians flee towards Turkey
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Pressure is mounting on Turkish authorities to open their borders to more than 200,000 refugees from Syria. What prevents the refugees from entering is a 764-km wall Turkey has built along the border, in fear of Kurdish “terrorists”.

After 8 years of the war, over 5.6 million people have fled Syria since 2011 but the conflict has not ended. Many thousands have been trying to flee violence in northwest Syria, the United Nations said on Thursday (23 May), due to an army assault on the last big rebel territory, Idlib. Most of them are waiting at the border of Turkey which is closed.

Eight years into the civil war, President Bashar al-Assad has retaken most of Syria and rebels still fighting have been squeezed into the northwest. Turkey-backed groups hold a strip of territory on the border, and Kurdish-led fighters hold the northeast.

Assad launched his offensive at the end of April in Idlib and parts of adjacent provinces with an intense bombardment, saying rebels had broken a truce.

This week, rebels rolled back some government advances on the main battlefront, retaking the city. Meanwhile, Government forces, supported by the Russian air force, increased strikes with bombs falling on towns and villages across the southern part of the enclave, said a British-based war monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Much of the bombardment has hit a buffer zone around Idlib province and surrounding territories, set up by Russia and Turkey in September under a deal which put off a full-blown assault against the region and its 3 million residents.