Russian airstrike kills 3 in Syria’s Idlib

By Khaled Suleiman

IDLIB, Syria (AA) - Three people were killed and eight others injured in a Russian airstrike Saturday in northern Syria’s Idlib province.
Russian warplanes struck residential areas in Idlib’s countryside with cluster bombs, a local civil defense source told Anadolu Agency.

“The attack killed three people and injured eight others,” the source added anonymously due to security concerns.

Russia, an ally of the Bashar al-Assad regime, has launched a massive air campaign against Assad’s opponents since September.

According to the London-based Syrian Network for Human Rights, a total of 2,704 Syrian civilians have been killed by Russian airstrikes since Moscow began its airstrikes in Syria.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests -- which had erupted as part of that year’s "Arab Spring" uprisings -- with unexpected ferocity and disproportionate force.

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

However, the Syrian Center for Policy Research, an NGO until recently based in Damascus, has put the total death toll from the ongoing conflict at more than 470,000.