At least 23 civilians, including seven members of the same family, were killed, Tuesday, December 17, in bombings of the Syrian regime on the province of Idlib in the northwest of the country at war, according to the Syrian Observatory of human rights (OSDH). The bombing also left around 30 people injured, some of them in serious condition. The region, which escapes the regime, was the subject of a cease-fire at the end of August, weakened by regular bombardments and clashes for weeks, added the NGO.
Among the 23 civilians killed, seven members of the same family, including one child, died in the village of Talmenas, and a woman and three daughters of a white helmets rescuer died in the village of Badama, clarified the OSDH. On his Twitter account, the white helmets organization, which brings together rescuers operating in rebel areas, released a video of the volunteer removing the lifeless bodies of his family members.
Idlib province is dominated by jihadists from the Hayat Tahrir Al-Cham (HTS) group, a former Syrian branch of Al-Qaida. This region and adjacent areas of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces are also home to several other jihadist groups and rebels.
The bombing has intensified
In the village of Maasaran, where six civilians died, according to the OSDH, the bombing targeted a market, damaging the storefronts of several clothing and vegetable businesses, an Agence France-Presse correspondent found.
Between the end of April and the end of August, the province of Idlib was shelled relentlessly by the Syrian army, supported by the Russian air force. The offensive killed nearly a thousand civilians, according to the OSDH, and displaced more than 400,000 people according to the United Nations.
Despite the truce, bombing and ground fighting, initially sporadic, have intensified, killing more than 250 civilians since the end of August in addition to hundreds of combatants from both camps, according to the OSDH.
In October, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad made his first visit to the province since the start of the war in 2011, saying that the battle for Idlib was the key to ending it.