At least seven civilians, including five children, were killed Tuesday in air strikes on a village in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
For more than a week, government forces have been carrying out Russian air support for a military operation on the outskirts of Idlib, which is still controlled by the Fatah al-Sham Front (formerly Nusra).
The Observatory said the raids targeted the village of Khan al-Sabeel in the center of the province, saying “seven people were killed, five children and two women.”
“We do not know whether it was an air strike by the Syrian regime or Russia,” Rami Abdul Rahman, director of the observatory, told AFP.
Several days ago, clashes were concentrated in the southeast of the governorate and in the northeast of neighboring Hama province, according to Abdel Rahman.
The operation comes after two months of sporadic fighting that forced tens of thousands of people to flee.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told AFP that “more than 60,000 people were displaced from the south of Idlib and north-east Hama in November and December 2017.”
“New camps have been set up on the border with Turkey, but they are not enough and some people are forced to stay outside,” he said.
An AFP correspondent reported that clashes continued on Tuesday.
