UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday that developments in Syria over the past week were serious and dramatic, and that it was high time for all parties in the country to seriously engage in resolving this conflict which has lasted for almost 14 years.
Tens of thousands of civilians are in danger in a region already on fire, Guterres told reporters. We are seeing the bitter fruits of the chronic collective failure of previous de-escalation arrangements to produce a genuine nationwide ceasefire or a serious political process to implement Security Council resolutions. This must change.
On November 27, several rebel groups aligned under the leadership of the U.N.-designated terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, launched their biggest challenge in years to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
They invaded Aleppo, which the government had controlled since 2016, knocking out the Syrian army and capturing the airport, a military academy and much of the city. They also captured towns and villages in Idlib governorate and were believed to be inside the central city of Hama on Thursday.
The United Nations says tens of thousands of people have been displaced in northwest Syria during the latest fighting.
Guterres said he had just spoken on the phone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey supports the rebel Syrian National Army, or SNA, and has also taken in millions of Syrian refugees since the war began in 2011.
“I stressed the urgent need for immediate humanitarian access to all civilians in need and a return to the UN-facilitated political process to end the bloodshed,” Guterres told the Turkish leader.
The secretary general told reporters it was time to develop a new, inclusive and comprehensive approach to ending the war.
In other words, restoring the sovereignty, unity, independence and territorial integrity of Syria and meeting the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people, he said.
Guterres urged the parties to reaffirm their commitment to a nearly decade-old Security Council resolution that calls for UN-facilitated dialogue and to engage seriously with his special envoy Geir Pedersen.
Pedersen warned during a press briefing at the UN Security Council on Tuesday that without de-escalation and rapid progress towards talks, Syria would be in grave danger of division, deterioration and destruction.
Syria's civil war grew out of peaceful anti-government protests that the Assad regime has brutally sought to suppress. This has created a massive humanitarian crisis, with some 7 million Syrians internally displaced and more than 5 million living as refugees outside the country.
The UN humanitarian office said 16.7 million Syrians are expected to need aid this year, the highest number since the crisis began in 2011.
