BEIRUT: Air strikes, likely to be Russian, on Thursday killed 22 civilians in a market in the northwestern province of Idlib, which is largely controlled by militants, a monitor said. The strikes hit the area of Harem, which is controlled by Hayat Tahrir al Sham, a group led by Syria’s former Al Qaeda affiliate, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The Britain-based monitor says it identified who carried out air strikes based on flight patterns, munitions used and aircraft.
Meanwhile, the Syrian government moved closer to ending rebel resistance in eastern Ghouta as civilians streamed out of one of its besieged, bomb-battered towns on Thursday and insurgents prepared to surrender another.
The army assault on eastern Ghouta, an area of towns and farmland just outside Damascus, has been one of the most intense in Syria’s seven-year-old war, killing more than 1,500 people in a relentless bombardment with war planes, shells and rockets.
An army officer interviewed on state television urged rebels who had not yet negotiated a deal to evacuate eastern Ghouta to quit. “Death is coming for you if you do not surrender,” he said.
It broadcast footage of a long line of parked buses on a highway in the town of Harasta with crowds of people standing alongside. Syrian army soldiers looked on.
A Syrian military source said 600 to 700 fighters were expected to be among about 2,000 people leaving in them in the coming hours for opposition areas in northwestern Syria.
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