(Kafr Jales) Nine people, including three children, were killed and dozens injured on Sunday in camps for displaced people hit by regime rocket fire in Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) reported.
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 on the spot. 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 seven civilians – including three children – as well as two unidentified people, and injured 75 civilians, the OSDH said. A previous toll reported six 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.
The firing by regime forces came, according to the Observatory, the day after five Syrian soldiers were killed in southwestern Idlib in shelling by an HTS-affiliated group.
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 since 2011 has killed almost half a million people and displaced several million others inside and outside the country.