French group to open two hotels in Damascus

PARIS (AFP) - Louvre Hotels Group, owned by China’s Jin Jiang, has signed an agreement to open two hotels under its own name in Damascus, it said during the weekend, a day after the UN announced an internal investigation into the bombing of hospitals in Syria.

The confirmation of the two hotels opening, after recent media reports, also came as at least six civilians were killed by the Syrian regime and Russian fire in northwestern Idlib province in the past days, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The region of around three million people, many of them displaced by fighting in other areas, is one of the last holdouts of opposition fighting against the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham alliance led by Al-Qaeda’s former Syria affiliate controls most of Idlib as well as parts of neighbouring Aleppo and Latakia provinces.

The hotels “will open soon under the brand name of Louvres Hotels Group,” the French company said in a statement.