The United Nations urged on Monday major powers in Syria to reach a settlement over the rebel-held Idlib province to avoid a bloodbath after a recent escalation in the area. Panos Moumtzis, the UN regional humanitarian coordinator, added that the escalation in fighting and air strikes in Idlib leave 2.5 million civilians with “no place else to go” within their shattered homeland. The northwest province, bordering Turkey, has become a “dumping ground” for civilians and fighters evacuated from other opposition-controlled areas, swelling its population, he said. “With this escalation, this deterioration, we worry really about seeing 2-1/2 million people becoming displaced more and more toward the border of Turkey if this is to continue,” Moumtzis told a news briefing in Geneva. Moumtzis cited reports of a deadly air strike on Sunday that had killed 11 people and hit a pediatric hospital. Air strikes on a village in Idlib killed at least 44 people overnight, the highest death toll in a single attack on the region this year, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday. The monitoring group said that Russian war planes probably carried out those attacks. Moumtzis said that a major battle for Idlib could be “much more complicated and brutal” than fighting for eastern Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta - two rebel-held areas that surrendered with evacuations in 2016 and 2018, respectively. Following the Eastern Ghouta offensive, and the previous offensive to retake Syrias second city Aleppo, rebels and civilians were forcibly evacuated to Idlib. But for the people of Idlib, "there is no other Idlib to take them out to," Moumtzis pointed out. "Really, this is the last location. There is no other location to further move them." “We cannot see a military solution, it cannot take place,” he said. “Our worry is that with the Idlib situation we may have not (yet) seen the worst in Syria.” At the same time, the mishmash of armed groups in the province are increasingly fighting amongst themselves. "The current composition makes (the situation) highly explosive," Moumtzis warned. Referring to Turkey, Russia and Iran, which have held peace talks, he said: “This is a de-escalation area, we hope the Astana guarantors, everybody will do everything to ensure a calming down of situation.” “The message of today is that the emergency not over. We still see massive displacement, we still see massive humanitarian needs, and have huge concerns on the protection of civilians,” he said. An aid convoy reached Douma in the enclave of Eastern Ghouta outside Damascus on Sunday, but the regime did not allow UN aid workers to accompany it, he said, saying that direct access was vital. Moreover, Moumtzis highlighted ongoing displacement inside Syria, saying more than 920,000 people were displaced during the first four months of 2018, the highest level in the seven-year conflict. “From January to April, there were over 920,000 newly displaced people," he said. The fresh displacement inside Syria brings the number of people internally displaced in the war-ravaged country to 6.2 million, while there are still some 5.6 million Syrian refugees in neighboring countries, according to UN figures. More than 350,000 people have been killed in the Syrian war since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-regime protests.