BEIRUT (AP) — Thousands of people have fled
government-held Syrian cities after opposition fighters warned they will
attack during next week’s presidential election to disrupt the vote,
opposition activists said Friday.
The Syrian government presents
the June 3 polls, in which President Bashar Assad is widely expected to
secure a third seven-year term, as a means to end the 3-year-old
conflict that has killed more than 160,000 people. The Syrian opposition
and its Western allies have denounced the vote as a farce aimed solely
at lending Assad a veneer of electoral legitimacy.
Civilians have
escaped the government-held northwestern city of Idlib, which is
blockaded by rebels on three sides, after the Islamic Council, a
military and civil body in rebel-held areas, ordered them to leave by
midnight Friday. The city, besieged by rebels for more than two years,
has witnessed frequent clashes.
Rebel fighters closed roads
linking areas under their control with those in government hands in the
city Friday after the deadline imposed by the council passed, said an
activist in the area who goes by the name of Hasan Idilbi.
"The opposition is preparing for a strike to disrupt the elections," Idilbi said via Skype.
Members of the Islamic Council could not be immediately reached for comment.
Another
activist based near Idlib named Bassil Asaad said thousands of people
have fled, although he said he didn’t expect a wide attack on Tuesday.
"I
think it is only psychological warfare, although some rebels are
warning they will turn it into a bloody day in Idlib," he said.
Asaad
Kanjo, who is based in the nearby town of Saraqeb, said about 4,000
people left Thursday alone. He added that they are mostly fleeing to
villages and towns in the surrounding province that carries the same
name, as well as areas close to the border with Turkey.
An amateur
video posted online by activists showed scores of people, some on foot,
moving in a rural area outside the city. The video appeared genuine and
matched Associated Press reporting of the event.
In the
government-held central city of Hama, activist Ahmad al-Ahmad said a few
hundred people had left for to the suburbs after similar rebel threats.
Abu
Odai, a spokesman for a small rebel group known as the Rahman Brigade,
said several rebel groups have said they will bombard the capital,
Damascus, during the election, although he said his group abstained from
doing so.
"We will not target civilians," he said from a suburb
of Damascus. "We will only target security offices that are far from
residential areas."
In the northern city of Aleppo, rockets that
slammed into pro-government neighborhoods killed at least 12 people and
wounded more than 80, the state news agency said. Fighting over the past
two years has cut Aleppo in two, leaving the east under opposition
control and the west in government hands.
Meanwhile, an activist
group said that crude bombs dropped by Syrian government forces on
rebel-held parts of Aleppo have killed nearly 2,000 people so far this
year.
The explosives — known as barrel bombs — are shrapnel-packed
devices that Syrian forces roll out of helicopters over rebel-held
neighborhoods.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights — one of the main groups counting the dead in the war — said
Friday that barrel bombs killed 1,963 people so far this year in Aleppo.
The
Observatory also said that the al-Qaida breakaway group known as the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant abducted 193 Kurds from the village
of Kabasin in Aleppo province on Thursday. There was no immediate word
on what spurred the move, but the Islamic State has long been engaged in
a brutal fight with Kurdish militias in northeastern Syria, and has
taken Kurdish hostages in the past.