Rocket attacks kill 8 civilians in Syria's Idlib

By Burak Karacaoglu and Esref Musa

IDLIB (AA) - At least eight civilians were killed Wednesday in an attack on a refugee camp in northwestern Syria, a local civil defense agency said.

The rocket attack was carried out by Iran-backed groups which support the Syrian regime, the White Helmets said, adding that the casualties are mostly children.

The rockets were fired on the Idlib de-escalation zone from Mount Azzan in the southern countryside of Aleppo province, a Syrian opposition’s observatory said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Russian airstrikes killed six civilians in Idlib, taking the death toll during the day to 14.

In the last month, attacks in the Idlib de-escalation zone have killed 75 civilians, including 13 children, according to the White Helmets.

Turkey and Russia agreed in September 2018 to turn Idlib into a de-escalation zone where acts of aggression are expressly prohibited.

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

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 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 Dilara Hamit in Ankara