At least thirteen people, including children, were killed on Sunday June 25 by Russian airstrikes on a rebel region in northwestern Syria. According to an NGO, it is the deadliest attack of the year in this war-ravaged country.
These air raids hit the province of Idlib, including a fruit and vegetable market in this city, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH). Nine civilians including two children died. Four other people were killed in another strike not far from Idlib, according to the same source. “These Russian raids are the deadliest in Syria this year and constitute a massacre,” UK-based OSDH director Rami Abdel Rahmane told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Russian forces, allied with the Syrian regime, carried out the strikes in response to rebel drone attacks that killed four civilians, including two children last week, Abdel Rahman said.
At least thirty people injured
Ahmed Yazigi, a member of the civil defense in Jisr Al-Choghour, a town controlled by the rebels, reported nine people killed, without specifying whether fighters were among them. Mr. Yazigi denounced “a direct attack on a popular market, an essential source of income for farmers”.
According to the director of the OSDH, Rami Abdel Rahmane, who relies on a large network of sources in Syria, at least thirty civilians were injured in the Russian strikes. “Six civilians were killed in Jisr Al-Choghour and three rebel fighters were killed nearby by Russian airstrikes.” A civilian, a Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) fighter and two children of TIP fighters were also killed in a strike near the city of Idlib, according to Mr. Abdel Rahman.
TIP members, mostly from China’s Uighur Muslim minority, traveled to Syria after 2011 to help jihadist formations, including Hayat Tahrir Al-Cham (HTS), dominated by the former local branch of Al-Qaeda.
Several million displaced since the beginning of the war
Russia is the main supporter of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and has been intervening militarily in Syria since 2015. With the support of Russia and Iran, the Syrian regime has regained most of the territory lost at the beginning of the war, triggered in 2011 by the repression of pro-democracy demonstrations.
The last pocket of armed opposition to the regime includes large areas of Idlib province (west) as well as territories bordering the provinces of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia. The HTS is the main group active in this region, where there are also other less influential rebel factions, supported to varying degrees by Turkey.
The war in Syria has claimed more than half a million lives, according to the OSDH, and displaced several million people.