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Militant infighting kills nearly 140, forces 1000s to flee northern Syria

Sunday, 29 May 2016 2:45 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 29 May 2016 2:46 PM ]

Extremists hold a position in the town of Douma, on the eastern edges of the Syrian capital, Damascus, April 10, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

Fierce infighting between the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group and rival militants for control of two towns in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo has killed nearly 140 people and forced thousands of civilians to flee their homes.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said on Sunday that at least 29 civilians have died in the crossfire since Daesh launched an assault against the towns of Marea and Azaz in Aleppo early on Friday.

The militant infighting has also killed at least a total of 108 extremists on both sides over the past days, the Britain-based monitoring group added.

There are many women and children among the over 6,000 civilians who have been forced to leave the troubled towns, which are on the outskirts of the provincial capital city of Aleppo.

The United Nations (UN) has expressed concern about some 165,000 civilians who have been trapped by the fighting between Azaz and the closed Turkish border.

The two towns have been under the control of extremist militants, which Daesh is attempting to push out.

An anesthetist who fled Marea with his family after five relatives were killed has said that Daesh surrounded the town’s hospital for 10 hours on Friday, injuring two members of the staff. The militants also forced doctors to operate on an injured militant without electricity since the terrorist group had deactivated the hospital’s generator.

An injured Syrian man is helped outside a hospital following shelling on the government-held Meidan neighborhood, a historically Armenian area in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, May 27, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

The international medical charity, Doctors Without Borders [Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)], has also announced that it was evacuating patients and staff from the hospital in the neighboring town of Salamah as it was just three kilometers from the front line.

In recent months, Daesh terrorists have been losing ground in both Syria and Iraq, where they have been involved in a campaign of terror over the past years.

Some US-led Western countries and their regional allies are accused of supporting the militant groups that have been wreaking havoc in Syria over the past five years.

United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimates that over 400,000 people have been killed in the crisis that has gripped Syria since March 2011.

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