The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

Infrastructure and facilities in Idlib countryside: what wasn’t hit by warplanes of the regime and the Russians is looted by the thieves

The most violent military escalation in Idlib Province since April 2019 continues, the people are fed up with the intensity of shelling and displacement, in conjunction with the reduction of support for humanitarian organizations and moving to areas north of Aleppo, or what is known as “Olive Branch and Euphrates Shield”.

Cities and towns of Idlib countryside have been destroyed with their homes and infrastructure, as well as hospitals and health centers, and in contrast, poverty forced hundreds of families from these areas to remain at the mercy of the bloody war machine.

At the same time, the area became vulnerable to “thieves” in addition to theft of facilities and power plants under the sight of the so-called “Rescue Government” of “Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham”, like Bsida power plant which is the main station that feed south of Idlib until the northern countryside of Hama, after it became ready to operate, preceded by long repairs that took nearly a year of work, and also al-Za’lana water station in the eastern countryside of Maarrat al-Nu’man, which feeds all the entire countryside with drinking water, and the cost of repairing and restarting them was thousands of dollars, where their contents were stolen and the rest were transferred to warehouses of the Rescue Government.

Also “Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham” through its merchants, took the oil pumping pipelines out of the ground in the liberated areas from Hama to Aleppo in the east of Maarrat al-Nu’man area adjacent to the front line between the factions and the regime forces, where the stolen items were collected in al-Ghadqa town east of Maarrat al-Nu’man, near one of their headquarters, and it was estimated that they were sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well as the railways and many more.

The chaos also destroyed the infrastructures of those areas such as facilities and cities, and what the warplanes of the regime and the Russians were unable to complete; was completed by the thieves and merchants of the blood of the Syrian people, taking advantage of the displacement of most of the people from the area, where sources confirmed to the “Syrian Observatory” that these facilities were close to contact lines with the regime forces, also several members, digger and truck drivers were also killed during the process of emptying contents of these facilities, and selling them to the “regime” the newly made crossings in al-Eis and al-Rashedin, and returning them as barrel bombs to kill and displace civilians, while the residents are very concerned about a new handover by the factions for their towns east of the highway.