When the fighters of the Islamic State (Isil) began to murder opposition activists in Aleppo, Mostafa and his family fled south towards Raqqa.

When Raqqa fell to the jihadists, they fled again, this time to the northern countryside of Aleppo near the border with Turkey.

And when Assad’s forces took control of the countryside in 2015, they fled to Idlib, now the last-remaining rebel stronghold in Syria.

“We’ve been here about three years. Idlib has been a safe place for us,” Mostafa told The Sunday Telegraph. “But we always know this day would come. Everyone in Syria knows you can go to another place but the war will follow you.”

For Mostafa and around one million other displaced Syrians, Idlib has been a place of relative safety after being forced to flee their homes.

Families from all over Syria - Aleppo, Ghouta, Daraa, and a dozen other bombed-out cities - converged on the rural northwestern province after their own hometowns were overrun by Isil or the regime.

Around half of the 2.5 million civilians in Idlib arrived there recently from somewhere else.