Airstrike kills child, injures 4 in Syria’s Idlib

IDLIB, Syria (AA) – A Syrian child was killed and four civilians were wounded in an airstrike in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province on Saturday, according to a local civil defense official.

Fighter jets carried out the attack on the province’s Hazano neighborhood in the morning, Mustafa Hajj Youssef, director of the White Helmets civil-defense agency said.

He said a fire broke out in the area after the attack, but was quickly put out by civil defense forces.

Notably, Idlib falls within a network of de-escalation zones -- endorsed by Turkey, Russia and Iran -- in which acts of aggression are expressly prohibited.

Controlled largely by anti-regime groups, Idlib has remained the target of intense airstrikes for the last two months. In January alone, 211 civilians were killed in the province while another 1,447 were injured.

During the airstrike attacks in Idlib's de-escalation zone at least six hospitals and health centers were also targeted.

Syria has only just begun to emerge from a devastating conflict that began in 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on demonstrators with unexpected ferocity.