BEIRUT: Air strikes by the regime and its Russian ally killed 12 civilians including three children in northwest Syria on Thursday, a monitor said.
Since late April, the Syrian regime and Russia have stepped up deadly raids on the Idlib region of three million people.
The bombardment on the fighter-held bastion has killed hundreds, pounded health centres and schools, and caused more than 330,000 people to flee their homes.
Aid groups have decried a “nightmare” that has slain an alarming amount of children, in the latest bloody episode of Syria’s eight-year civil war.
Save the Children said the number of children killed in Idlib over the past four weeks had exceeded the number slain in the same region in the whole of last year.
“The current situation in Idlib is a nightmare,” the charity’s Sonia Khush said. “It’s clear that once again children have been killed and injured in indiscriminate attacks,” she added in a statement.
On Thursday, Russian air strikes killed seven civilians — including one child — in the bastion, most in and around the town of Maaret al Numan in Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
In the village of Kafar Roma near Maaret al Numan, a photographer saw rescue workers try to pull a young man out from under collapsed concrete.
And regime air raids killed five civilians — including two children — in neighbouring Aleppo province, the Britain-based monitor said.
The bastion under aerial attack is made up of a large part of the Idlib province, as well as slivers of the adjacent governorates of Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia.
More than 730 civilians have been killed there in air strikes and ground-to-ground fire by the Damascus government and its allies since late April. — AFP
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
