Regime airstrike kills 5 in Syria’s Idlib

By Halit Suleyman and Ayse Aktas

IDLIB, Syria (AA) – Five people were killed and scores injured in a regime airstrike Monday in the northwestern Idlib province, according to pro-opposition Syrian civil defense sources.

Some 21 people remain under the debris of collapsed buildings following the strike, which targeted a residential area in Kafr Takharim town, the sources said.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests -- which erupted as part of the "Arab Spring" uprisings -- with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to the UN.

However, the Syrian Center for Policy Research, a Beirut-based NGO, puts the death toll from the six-year conflict at more than 470,000.