Civilians on Friday packed a road leading out of a flashpoint town in northwest
Syria, where two weeks of heightened regime and
Russian bombardment has displaced 235,000 people.
![More than 235,000 flee intense bombing in NW Syria](http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/afp.com/d0bf29a53e5b42c589d383c4c05e0b53215c9b7f.jpg)
Pick-up trucks carrying mattresses, clothes and house-hold appliances ferried entire families out of southern Idlib province, most heading towards safer areas further north, said an AFP correspondent on the ground.
Since mid-December, regime forces and their Russian allies have heightened bombardment on the southern edge of the final major opposition-held pocket of Syria, eight years into the country's devastating war.