Nine civilians, including six children, died this Saturday while collecting olives in the province of Idlib (northwestern Syria) due to army bombings in this region, the last rebel stronghold in the country, an NGO reported.
“A ground bombardment by regime forces” hit a group picking olives in the village of Qofin, in the mountainous region of Jabal al-Zawiya, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), a non-governmental organization. (NGO).
Nine civilians “among them a woman and six children” were killed and others were injured, some seriously, added the OSDH, based in the United Kingdom, but which has a wide network of sources in Syria, cited by Agence France-Presse. Presse.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, the former local branch of Al Qaeda) controls entire areas of Idlib province and parts of the neighboring regions of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia.
Damascus considers HTS a terrorist group, as do the United States and the United Nations.
According to the OSDH, bombings and clashes already occurred in that area before the group was attacked this Saturday, while the HTS intensively bombed the neighboring territory controlled by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad after the deadly attack.
Started in 2011, after the repression of anti-government protests, the war in Syria caused more than half a million deaths and millions of people displaced. A ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey was declared in Idlib following a regime offensive in March 2020, but is regularly violated.
Source: TSF
