Syria: Idlib Attacks

Debate between Baroness Hussein-Ece and Baroness Sugg

Tuesday 18th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg]

My noble friend raises an important point. Sadly, due to the conditions in Syria, getting accurate information about what has happened to British children there is extremely difficult. We continue to attempt to build and improve on the information we have. We have no people on the ground ourselves, but we are working closely with our international partners to try to improve that information and to understand how many British children are in Syria.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, there are 1 million children in Idlib province currently under threat of being bombed. I saw a terrible video this morning of two little boys screaming to the White Helmets, “Please help my little brother”, who was buried. The film showed a little boy of about four being dug out from under the rubble. I do not know his religion or faith; I do not care. The point is that this aerial bombardment can be done only by Assad forces and Russian forces—al-Nusra and others do not have aeroplanes—so we know who is doing it. Human Rights Watch has commented. Why are we not coming out and condemning this? Why is the United Nations not condemning Assad’s regime and the Russians for what they are doing? Also, do the Government have concerns now about the risk of escalation given the report yesterday, I think it was, of a Turkish military post just over the border being hit? What is the comment on that?

[Baroness Sugg]

My Lords, I spoke earlier about the importance of using our position at the UN to make progress on this. As I said, there is a meeting today, and we very much hope to see some progress on that. It is important that we work closely with our international partners on this, move as one and gather the evidence. The important thing is to ensure we see a de-escalation in the violence there, but we need to be realistic about what leverage we actually have.

On Turkey and the reports that the noble Baroness mentions, we are of course closely monitoring the situation in north-east Syria. We are concerned about the humanitarian impact of any possible Turkish military action on both the civilian population and, indeed, humanitarian actors. We have made our concerns clear to Turkey on that and remain in close contact with our partners to ensure we have contingency planning in place to protect locally based humanitarian aid workers and civilians and to ensure that all their needs are met if we see any military action.