ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - At least six civilians were killed on Tuesday when Russian airstrikes targeted a displacement camp near rebel-held Idlib in northwest Syria, a war monitor reported.
“Six civilians, including a woman and two of her children, were killed and eight others were injured due to two airstrikes carried out by the Russian warplanes targeting a camp for displaced people on the outskirts of Al-Hamamah village in Jesr Al-Shughour [Jisr al-Shughour] countryside west of Idlib,” said the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), adding that a third airstrike hit Ain Shib village in the west of Idlib city.
The White Helmets (Syria Civil Defense) said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that the camp targeted by the Russian airstrikes was the Ahl Saraqeb displacement camp.
Half of Idlib province, as well as parts of Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia, are the last rebel-held bastions in Syria after President Bashar al-Assad, with Russian and Iranian support, seized back swathes of territory over the course of the brutal Syrian civil war, which erupted in 2011.
A ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey has been in place in northwest Syria since March 2020 but the area has witnessed a recent flare-up in violence.
Russia has been Assad’s strongest ally throughout the brutal civil war that initially began as an uprising.
Since June 24, Russian airstrikes killed 60 people and injured 103 more in northwest Syria, according to SOHR, 26 of which were civilians including two women and two children. 34 members of jihadist groups including 17 fighters from the former Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Syria's former Al-Qaeda branch, were also killed in the strikes.
On Monday, Russian warplanes carried out five different airstrikes on a mountainous area in northwest Syria’s Latakia, according to SOHR. No casualties were reported.
In August, Russian warplanes targeted a military base on the outskirts of Idlib, killing at least eight HTS fighters.
