At least 53 civilians, including many children, were killed Sunday in a Russian bombardment targeting a village in the eastern province of Deir ez-Zor, where Syrian forces are battling against the Islamic state, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The head of the Observatory Rami Abdul Rahman told AFP that “the Russian bombing targeted the dawn of Sunday on the village of Shaafa, which is located along the eastern bank of the Euphrates River,” and also resulted in the number of wounded.
Abdul Rahman said the dead belonged to “two or three families at most.”
Al-Shifa is located on the opposite side of the area where the regime’s forces are engaged in air support against fighting the Islamic State Organization on the West Bank of the Euphrates River, which divides the province into two parts.
“The fighters of the Islamic state organization usually flee the battles with the regime forces to areas located on the eastern bank of the Euphrates,” Abdul Rahman said.
Since the summer of 2014, the Islamic state has controlled large parts of the border province of Deir al-Zour with Iraq and the eastern neighborhoods of the city, the center of the province.
However, after several multi-party attacks, the extremist organization recently lost most of the province, completely expelling its center from Deir al-Zour and other major cities, most notably the fields and Bu Kamal.
The regime’s forces control 52 percent of the province, compared to about 39 percent of the Syrian Democratic Forces fighting jihadists in large areas on the eastern bank of the river.
The Islamic state organization controls only nine percent of the entire area of the province, according to Abdul Rahman.
