IDLIB, Syria (AA): Five civilians were killed and five others injured in overnight airstrikes in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, according to sources with the White Helmets civil defense agency.
Airstrikes that continued until Thursday morning claimed the lives of four children and their father in al-Faqie village, with the mother being rescued from debris, sources said.
The attacks taking place at dawn also targeted the villages of Frikeh, Sheikh Mustafa, Al Hamidiyah, Hbit and the outskirts of the town of Kafr Rumah.
According to a pro-opposition warplane observatory, the attacks were carried out by six Russian warplanes that took off from Khmeimim airbase in the country’s western Latakia province.
Attacks carried out by the Syrian regime and Iran-backed terrorist groups in Idlib’s de-escalation zone are estimated to have killed at least 152 civilians — and injured more than 445 others — since the beginning of 2019.
In September 2018, Turkey and Russia agreed to turn Idlib into a de-militarized zone after a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his counterpart Vladimir Putin in Russia’s coastal city of Sochi.
Ankara and Moscow signed a memorandum of understanding calling for the stabilization of the situation in Idlib’s de-escalation zone, in which acts of aggression are prohibited.
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.
Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and more than 10 million others displaced, according to UN officials.
