Tens of thousands flee clashes in Syria's north

Tens of thousands of Syrian civilians have fled ferocious fighting between Russian-backed regime forces and Islamic State group jihadists over the past week in the country's ravaged north.

Supported by Russian air power and artillery, Syrian government forces have waged a fierce offensive against IS, seizing around 90 villages since mid-January.

They took eight yesterday alone, a military source told state news agency SANA, "expanding our control in northeast parts of Aleppo province".

Their aim, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, is IS-held Khafsah, the main station pumping water into Aleppo.

Residents of Syria's second city have been without mains water for 47 days after the jihadists cut the supply.

The fighting over the past week has sparked an exodus of "more than 30,000 civilians, most of them women and children", Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said yesterday.

Most of the displaced went to areas around Manbij, held by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters also fighting IS.

Ibrahim al-Quftan, co-chair of Manbij's civil administration, told AFP that as many as 40,000 displaced had arrived in recent days.

Since civil war broke out in Syria in March 2011, more than half of its pre-war population has been forced to flee their homes.

More than 310,000 people have been killed since Syria's conflict erupted with protests against President Bashar al-Assad's rule, but international efforts at stemming the violence have so far failed.

Another round of UN-brokered peace talks ended Friday in Geneva, with envoy Staffan de Mistura hoping to convene another session later this month that would include the issue of counter-terrorism.

Damascus and its ally Moscow had both insisted that "terrorism" be added to the three other focuses of the negotiations: governance, elections, and a constitution.