#Russian #airstrike #Syria #kills #monitor
A Russian airstrike on Friday killed seven people, four of them children, in the rebel-held Idlib region of Syria, a war observer said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had confirmed the deaths “including four children who are siblings, two men and an unidentified person… as a result of Russian airstrikes” in the Jisr al-Shughur countryside.
The children are all under the age of 10, said Rami Abdel Rahman, who runs the UK-based observatory.
Six of the victims were civilians, the observatory said, adding that more people, including women and children, were trapped under the rubble.
The victims were mostly displaced Syrians from neighboring Hama province, said the observer, drawing on a wide network of sources inside Syria.
Russia is a major supporter of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
With Russian and Iranian support, Damascus reclaimed much of the ground lost in the early stages of the conflict that erupted in 2011 when the government brutally repressed pro-democracy protests.
The last armed opposition to the regime covers large parts of Idlib province and parts of the neighboring provinces of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, led by ex-members of Syria’s former Al Qaeda franchise, is the dominant group in the region, but other rebel groups are also active, with varying degrees of Turkish support.
The war in Syria has killed nearly half a million people and displaced about half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes.
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