Flash floods swept through northwestern Syria amid heavy rain on Saturday evening, resulting in the deaths of at least two children and widespread damage in displacement camps.
A third child was rescued after being swept away by floods caused by heavy rainfall in the Ain Issa area in Syria’s coastal Latakia governorate.
The three children were reportedly siblings.
The floods also trapped three people in the village of Al-Assaliyah, with civil defence teams able to rescue one of them later on. Search and rescue operations continue for the other two despite challenges caused by the terrain, strong currents, and dangers posed by rocky cliffs, reports said.
Mohammad Abulrahman, the governor of neighbouring Idlib province, said the floodwaters inundated a number of camps used by displaced persons, causing significant damage to makeshift shelters.
Speaking to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), Abdulrahman said several schools and mosques were opened to shelter families who were forced to temporary leave their tents.
Staff and patients at the hospital in the town of Ain al-Baida had to be evacuated to hospitals in Jisr al-Shughur and the city of Idlib after the facility was also damaged by flooding.
Footage shared by SANA shows an entire tent city in Khirbet al-Joz in Idlib province completely inundated, as floods battered their way through the encampment.
Emergency and Disaster Management Minister Raed al-Saleh said response teams are working to clear waterways and evacuate affected families, noting that his ministry's teams are overseeing field responses in Idlib, Sarmada, Jisr al-Shughur, Saraqib, and the Hama countryside and responding to developments on the ground.
He urged residents to exercise caution and stay away from flood channels and areas where water accumulates, amid the possibility of continued rainfall in the coming hours.
Idlib health authorities dispatched a number of ambulances and mobile clinics to affected areas.
The rain has eased compared with Saturday night’s peak, but conditions have not fully stabilised yet in parts of northwest Syria.
Civil defence and local authorities say heavy rain and thunderstorms are still affecting areas in Idlib and Latakia provinces on Sunday, with rivers and seasonal streams running high and more flooding possible, especially around camps and low‑lying sites.
The flooding and subsequent evacuation of people have further exacerbated the suffering of thousands of families already reeling from the effects of a 14 year conflict, with tens of thousands of people still living in refugee camps.
Syria’s 14-year conflict uprooted more than half the country’s pre-war population, with millions internally displaced. Many of those fled to areas outside the former Assad regime’s control at the time, including Idlib.
More than a year since the fall of the Assad regime, millions of Syrians have yet to return to their towns, with homes destroyed and infrastructure battered. The new government has tried to garner international support to rebuild the country.