BALADI NEWS
A top UN official on the Turkey-Syria border has warned that a catastrophe unparalleled in the decade-long Syrian war is unfolding.
Mark Cutts, the UN deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, told Sky News that nowhere is safe for the civilians who are fleeing a Syrian government and Russian onslaught.
"We are seeing hundreds of thousands of people on the move at the moment. It's a truly horrific situation." he said.
"These are women and children and elderly people. This is a huge exodus. Just at a time when we were hoping to see a de-escalation of the situation we are seeing the complete opposite."
Idlib, in northwestern Syria, is one of the last remaining pockets of Syria not yet back in Syrian regime control.
"The problem is that there is just nowhere that seems to be safe these days because even some of the areas that used to be safe have been coming under attack," Mr Cutts explained.
"So people keep moving from place to place. But also this is an area that is already full of displaced people. People from many different parts of Syria fled to the northwest.
"People really are desperate, traumatised. They just don't know what to do."
Images show what's left of a minibus carrying members of three families who had been trying to flee.
Inside the small red van were two fathers, two mothers and four children. They had hoped they would escape this latest bombardment, but it followed them. A single rocket killed everyone inside.
Young children and their parents, all wrapped together in blankets, lay next to the van as an uncle prepared for their burial.
On the roads out of both the cities of Aleppo and Idlib, convoys of families have been pushing forward for days now.
Asked about the international response to this latest Syrian crisis, Mr Cutts said: "This is what is so shocking about this crisis. Who is going to protect these people?
Source: Sky News.