At least three civilians from the same family were murdered when Russian airplanes attacked the outskirts of the northwest Syrian city of Idlib on Saturday, According to a war monitor.
Russia has routinely targeted Syria’s last major rebel stronghold over the years, but assaults killing civilians had been rare this year until an escalation in fighting in late June.
Russian air attacks this morning” to the west of the city killed “three people from the same family and six people were injured,” according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, adding that rescue crews were still working to remove wreckage.
The Observatory, a British-based organisation that relies on sources on the ground in Syria, said four attacks hit the area where rebel bases are also present.
With Russian and Iranian assistance, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has reclaimed much of the land lost to rebels early in the fight.
The last pockets of armed opposition to the Assad regime include swaths of rebel-held Idlib province, which is controlled by the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), commanded by the country’s former Al-Qaeda offshoot.
Syria’s 12-year-long war broke out after the repression of peaceful anti-government demonstrations escalated into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and global jihadists.
The war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions.
Since 2020, a ceasefire deal brokered by Damascus ally Moscow and rebel-backer Ankara has largely held in Syria’s northwest, despite periodic clashes.
However, in an uptick in violence, Russian air strikes killed at least 13 people in Idlib province on June 25, in what the Observatory said at the time was the deadliest such attack on the country this year.
At least nine civilians were murdered, including two children, with six of them killed at a fruit and vegetable market in Jisr al-Shughur.
According to the government, the operation was carried out “in response to daily and repeated attacks… on civilians” in residential areas of nearby Hama province.
The date of the shelling was not specified, but the revelation came a day after Russian air strikes killed eight HTS-affiliated fighters, according to the Observatory.
Around three million people live in the rebel-held Idlib province, with around half of them displaced from other parts of the nation.
