Truce crumbles in Syria’s last refuge, and residents fear the worst

One of the toughest things this Ramadan for Umm Mohammed, a widow now living in a displaced persons camp in Syria’s Idlib province without water or electricity, has been explaining to her young son and daughter that this year they will be unable to visit the grave of their father.

He was killed by regime forces in the early days of the Syrian civil war, and for the past seven years, on the Eid holiday that follows Ramadan, it has been the family tradition to visit him – one impossible to keep after their hometown in Hama province fell this month to government forces.

“War has deprived us of so many things,” she says. “My son was weeping last night because he will not be able to see his father’s grave this year. Even this simple dream has been snatched from my children by the army of [President] Bashar al-Assad.”

Such stories are commonplace in Syria, where more than half the population has either fled the

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