Syria regime,Russia resume Idlib air strikes
Damascus and Russia resumed air strikes on Idlib in northwest Syria on Monday, a monitor said, scrapping a ceasefire for the jihadist-run bastion and accusing the regime’s opponents of targeting a Russian air base.
The northwestern region, which hosts some three million people, is one of the last major centres of resistance to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime after eight years of war.
Damascus said Thursday it had agreed to a truce from Friday to halt three months of regime and Russian bombardment on the area, which has killed more than 790 civilians and pushed 400,000 people from their homes.
But jihadists running the region on Saturday refused to comply with a key condition to that truce, declaring they would never withdraw from a planned buffer zone around the area.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said regime air strikes resumed on the region minutes after the truce was cancelled, before Russian planes joined in too.
Russian planes pounded the western edge of the enclave, while aircraft from both sides resumed bombardment of its southern flank, the Britain-based war monitor said.
Further south, the monitor said four civilians were killed in regime barrel bombings on the town of Morek in the northern Hama region, adding that these were the first civilian victims since the regime bombardments resumed.
Earlier, an AFP correspondent saw the wind blow plumes of white smoke across the fields after planes and helicopters pounded Khan Sheikhun town in the south of the region.
A few families fled the town in cars or trucks piled high with their belongings, women and children perched on top, the correspondent said.
Syria’s military said it was scrapping the truce as “armed terrorist groups, backed by Turkey, refused to abide by the ceasefire and launched many attacks on civilians in surrounding areas”, according to a statement carried by state news agency SANA.
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