About one million Syrians fled Idlib and its surrounding countryside in northwest Syria this past year.
Fighting has calmed since March when Ankara, which backs some groups opposed to President Bashar al-Assad, agreed a ceasefire with Moscow, which has supported Damascus with heavy air power.
Thousands of displaced Syrians have begun moving back to their homes in war-torn Idlib province despite the risk of renewed conflict, some driven by fear that the new Coronavirus could wreak havoc on crowded camps near the Turkish border.
Vans and trucks stacked with mattresses and household appliances choked a road snaking south through Idlib province on Sunday as families driven out just months earlier by air strikes sought to return.
The Syrian Response Coordination Group, a northwest Syria relief agency, said 103,459 Syrians had returned to towns in the Aleppo and Idlib countryside since the ceasefire.
Syria’s northwest does not yet have a confirmed case of Coronavirus, but doctors fear the area’s ravaged medical infrastructure and overflowing camps would quickly turn any outbreak into a humanitarian disaster.
As the tentative peace holds, displaced Syrians are weighing up grim options: remain in tightly packed camps with few services where a viral spread could be lethal, or return to homes still at risk of getting caught in renewed bloodshed.
