Syria violence displaces 500,000 in two months

A Russian-backed Syrian government offensive against the country’s last rebel enclave has caused one of the biggest waves of displacement in the nine-year-old war. Weeks of intensive aerial bombardment and a bruising ground offensive have emptied entire towns in northwest Idlib and sent huge numbers fleeing north towards the Turkish border. “Since 1 December, some 520,000 people have been displaced from their homes, the vast majority -- 80 percent -- of them women and children,” said David Swanson, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The exodus, which coincides with a biting winter, is one of the largest since the 2011 start of a conflict in which more than half of the country’s pre-war population of 20 million has been displaced.