Assad steps up campaign to retake northwest Idlib province Tens of thousands fleeing northwestern Syria NEAR MAARET AL-NUMAN, SYRIA: Syrian regime forces were poised Monday to enter Maaret Al-Numan, a town of symbolic and strategic importance in the country’s last major opposition bastion that is deserted after months of bombardment. Maaret Al-Numan is a strategic prize lying on the M5 highway linking Damascus to Syria’s second city Aleppo, a main artery coveted by the regime. It is also the second biggest city in the beleaguered northwestern province of Idlib, the last stronghold of anti-regime forces and home to some three million people — half of them displaced by violence in other areas. Damascus loyalists have since Friday seized around 18 towns and villages around the city, reaching its eastern outskirts, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday. They have also cut a section of the M5 leading north from Maaret Al-Numan to Idlib city, the Observatory and the pro-government Al-Watan newspaper reported. Retaking full control of the highway is essential to the government’s efforts to rekindle a moribund economy. The fighting has forced hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee their homes, with hundreds of vehicles on Monday packing a road leading out of the flashpoint region under heavy bombardment. “Maaret Al-Numan is nearly besieged,” said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman, explaining that regime forces were now stationed south, east and north of the city. Abdel Rahman said Damascus loyalists were now pushing from the west and northwest in a bid to tighten the noose around the opposition holdout. An AFP correspondent in the region said regime forces were also trying to reach the city’s southwestern edges to prevent rebels and extremists from falling back. Idlib and nearby areas of Aleppo and Latakia provinces are dominated by the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) extremist group, led by members of the country’s former Al-Qaeda franchise. In recent months, the regime of President Bashar Assad has chipped away territory under extremists’ control in the four provinces, despite several cease-fire agreements. Assad has repeatedly vowed to reassert control over the whole of Syria. An AFP correspondent said Maaret Al-Numan had become a ghost town, but the Observatory maintained that some civilians had remained in the area despite the escalation. Fearing further regime advances, residents of several towns and villages located north of Maarat Al-Numan, have started to flee, the Observatory and an AFP correspondent said. Pick-up trucks carrying entire families from the town of Saraqib and the Jabal Al-Zawiya region packed a road leading north toward the border with Turkey, said an AFP correspondent. The vehicles were crammed with mattresses, clothes and household appliances, many belonging to families who had previously fled Maaret Al-Numan.