(Jisr Al-Choghour) At least 13 people, including children, were killed in Russian airstrikes on a rebel region in northwestern Syria on Sunday, the deadliest attack of the year in the ravaged country by the war, according to an NGO.
Nine civilians, including two children, were killed in these air raids on the province of Idlib, in particular in a fruit and vegetable market in this city, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
Four other people were killed in another strike near Idlib, according to the same source.
“These Russian raids are the deadliest in Syria this year and constitute a massacre,” Rami Abdel Rahmane, director of the UK-based OSDH, told AFP.
Russian forces, allied with the Syrian regime, carried out the strikes in Idlib province in response to rebel drone attacks that killed four civilians, including two children, last week, Abdel Rahman said.
On Sunday, “six civilians were killed in Jisr Al-Choghour and three rebel fighters were killed nearby by Russian airstrikes”, according to the director of this NGO, who relies on a large network of sources in Syria.
An AFP reporter on the scene saw clouds of smoke above the site of the attack and ambulances carrying injured people from the market.
PHOTO ABDULAZIZ KETAZ, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Trucks damaged by the strikes in a market in Jisr Al-Choghour
Ahmed Yazigi, a member of the civil defense in Jisr Al-Choghour, a town controlled by the rebels, reported nine people killed, without specifying whether fighters were among them.
Mr. Yazigi denounced “a direct attack on a popular market, an essential source of income for farmers”.
“Indescribable”
Saad Fato, a 35-year-old worker who survived the raid, told AFP he spent his morning trying to save the injured.
“The Russian raids targeted us while I was carrying tomatoes,” he said.
“It’s indescribable as there were dead, wounded and entrails” of victims, he added, his hands full of blood from the wounded he was trying to save.
WHITE HELMETS PHOTO, SUPPLIED BY REUTERS
Members of the White Helmets volunteer.
A civilian, a Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) fighter and two children of TIP fighters were also killed in a strike near the city of Idlib, Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Members of the TIP, mostly from China’s Uyghur Muslim minority, traveled to Syria after 2011 to help jihadist formations, including Hayat Tahrir al-Cham (HTS), dominated by the former local branch of Al-Qaeda.
At least 30 civilians were injured in the Russian strikes, said Abdel Rahman, adding that this assessment was probably provisional.
” Special operations ”
In the evening, the Syrian Ministry of Defense declared that “in response to the attacks […] in recent days against the provinces of Hama and Latakia, which killed several civilians”, its armed forces carried out “several special operations in cooperation with the Russian air force”.
These operations targeted “terrorist positions” in Idlib province, killing “dozens” of them and destroying their arms depots and aerial drones, the ministry added in a press release relayed by the official agency. Syrian Sana.
Russia is the main backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and has been intervening militarily in Syria since 2015.
With the support of Russia and Iran, the Syrian regime has regained most of the territory lost at the start of the war, which was triggered in 2011 by the repression of pro-democracy demonstrations.
The last pocket of armed opposition to the regime includes large areas of the province of Idlib (west) as well as territories bordering the provinces of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia.
The HTS is the main group active in this region, where there are also other less influential rebel factions, supported to varying degrees by Turkey.
The war in Syria has claimed more than half a million lives according to the OSDH, and displaced several million people.