A missile has crashed near civilians in Syria's Idlib province at a makeshift camp for displaced people from the nearby Hama province.

Dramatic footage captured in the countryside area by Al Jazeera showed men, women and children desperately trying to find the nearest cover after the attack - images of which were also included in the film.

Al Jazeera's Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from Antakya in southern Turkey, said the missile strike was the strongest violation yet of a peace accord agreed in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana, recently between Russia, Turkey and Iran.

"Syrians are not surprised. Many of them believe that it is a kind of the diplomatic leverage game just before the Sochi meeting that is going to be held at the end of January," she said.

A push by the forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad aided by Russian air raids was causing a new wave of displacement from rebel-held territories.

About 120,000 people have fled their homes in Idlib province in recent weeks.

At least 179 people were killed in the besieged Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta in the past two weeks, according to activists.

Several people were in hospital after a bombing by government forces in Eastern Ghouta.

Aid workers on the scene said there were being treated for suffocation after a suspected chlorine gas attack.

Syrian troops have recaptured dozens of towns and villages from jihadist fighters, a monitor said yesterday, bringing them closer to a key military airport in the country's northwest.

"In the past 24 hours, regime forces have taken at least 79 villages in the southern parts of Aleppo province, an area near the Abu Duhur military airport," said Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor.

Russia-backed regime troops are aiming to reach the Abu Duhur base as part of a weeks-long assault against Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is dominated by al-Qaeda's former Syria affiliate, reported AFP.

The offensive has seen Syrian forces seize surrounding territory in the provinces of Aleppo and Hama as they close in on Abu Duhur, which lies just inside the Idlib province.

They briefly broke into the air base this week from the south but were ousted in a ferocious counter-offensive by jihadists and rebels.

With the latest push in Aleppo province, Abdel Rahman said, army troops were seeking to open a new front on the airport's northern and eastern flanks.

"Regime troops lost control of those villages in southern Aleppo province in 2012," he said.