A woman and eight children have been killed in two days in Syria by regime bombings in Idlib province (northwest), the last major stronghold of rebels and jihadists in the country, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said today.
Artillery fire targeting the village of Kansafra has killed four children of the same family, according to the Observatory, which has a vast network of sources in Syria.
An AFP photographer on the scene saw the victims’ father weeping over the graves of three of his children in a cemetery.
The body of a fourth child arrived later and was hurriedly buried as fires were repeated in a neighboring area.
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On Thursday, in the neighboring village of Balsun, artillery fire from the regime forces resulted in the death of four other children and the mother of three of them, the Observatory reported.
Idlib province has welcomed about three million people, two-thirds of whom are displaced who have come from other parts of the war-torn country for ten years.
The jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sam, a former al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, and its allies control about 50 percent of the province, as well as parts of the neighboring provinces of Hama, Latakia and Aleppo.
A ceasefire has been in place in the region since March 2020, following an attack by the three-month-old regime that displaced nearly one million people, according to the Observatory.
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Despite repeated violations, the ceasefire is generally observed, but since June regime forces have intensified bombing in the southern part of the province.
The war in Syria, which erupted in 2011 with the suppression of pro-democracy protests, has killed nearly half a million people, according to the Observatory, and displaced millions more.
