(Kafr Jales) Ten people, including three children, were killed and dozens injured on Sunday in northwestern Syria by bombardments by the Damascus regime, according to a new report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH). ).
Posted at 8:32
In the early morning, rockets hit camps for temporary displaced people in the Kafr Jales region, in the province of Idlib (northwest), noted an AFP correspondent. Tents were destroyed or burned, and bloodstains and rocket bits were visible.
Civil defense and resident teams rescued the injured and transferred them to nearby hospitals. There, the bodies of two girls were wrapped in blankets and lying on the ground, according to the AFP correspondent on the spot.
The shelling killed eight civilians – including three children – as well as two unidentified people, and injured 77 civilians, the OSDH said. A previous toll reported nine civilians killed.
More than 30 rockets fell on several areas west of Idlib city, including camps, the NGO added.
“We were getting ready in the morning to go to work when we heard shots. The children got scared and started screaming,” said Abou Hamid, 67, a displaced person.
“We didn’t know where to run. It wasn’t one or two rockets, but ten. The shards started flying all over the place and we didn’t know how to protect ourselves anymore,” he added.
The jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied rebel factions retaliated in the morning by targeting positions of regime forces who in turn fired again at areas in the area.
And in the late afternoon, renewed regime shelling in Kafr Lata in southern Idlib in response to HTS fire killed one person and injured three others as they were picking olives, the report said. OSDH.
The day before, according to the OSDH, five Syrian soldiers had perished in the southwest of Idlib in shelling by a group affiliated with HTS.
About half of Idlib and bordering areas of neighboring Hama, Aleppo and Latakia provinces are dominated by HTS, the ex-Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, and other less influential rebel factions.
The region is home to three million people, about half of whom are displaced.
Despite sporadic clashes, a ceasefire negotiated by Moscow, an ally of Damascus, and Ankara, support of rebel groups, has been largely respected since March 2020 in this region.
The war in Syria has since 2011 killed nearly half a million people and displaced several million others inside and outside the country.