The Guardian

The highway that determines the future for Syria and its citizens

Nearly a million people have fled up the M5 in search of safety as Assad tries to regain last rebel stronghold
The population of Idlib has grown from 1 million to 3 million as people have arrived trying to escape from Syrian troops. Photograph: Aaref Watad/AFP via Getty Images

It was dawn when the Hussein family packed up to leave their home in Saraqib. The whine of Russian and Syrian government warplanes had got too close for comfort in the last few days, and the thuds of bombs and artillery fire were scaring Odai al-Hussein’s 7-month-old son, Yahya.

Odai and his wife Banan spent two weeks agonising over whether to leave home and take Syria’s M5 highway north, into the unknown. But in the end, the looming violence of Bashar al-Assad’s new , the last rebel stronghold in the country,

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