Assad regime attacks kill 2 civilians in Syria’s Idlib

By Esref Musa and Burak Karacaoglu

IDLIB, Syria (AA) - Two civilians were killed and four others injured in Idlib, a de-escalation zone in Syria’s northwest, when Bashar al-Assad regime carried out attacks, according to local sources on Wednesday.

Assad regime’s surface-to-surface missiles in Birnas village left two civilians dead and four others injured, according to Idlib civil defense sources.

A total of three civilians were killed and six other injured in Idlib’s de-escalation zone due to the ground attacks and airstrikes by Assad regime over the past five days.

Turkey and Russia agreed last September to turn Idlib into a de-escalation zone where acts of aggression are expressly prohibited.

Under the deal, opposition groups in Idlib would remain in areas where they were already present, while Russia and Turkey would carry out joint patrols in the area to prevent a resumption of fighting.

Assad regime and its allies, however, have consistently broken the terms of the cease-fire, launching frequent attacks inside the de-escalation zone.

Since Turkey and Moscow hammered the deal on Sept. 17, some 950,000 civilians have been displaced. During the same period, a total of 1,282 civilians have been killed by Russian or regime airstrikes, among them were 219 women and 341 children.

The de-escalation zone is currently home to some four million civilians, including hundreds of thousands displaced in recent years by regime forces from throughout the war-weary country.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and more than 10 million others displaced, according to UN officials.

*Writing by Gozde Bayar