In the early hours of the morning, rockets hit temporary camps for displaced people in the Kafar Jales area, in Idlib province (northwest), an AFP correspondent found.
At least 10 people, including three children, were killed and dozens injured in northwest Syria on Sunday in shelling by the Damascus regime, according to the non-governmental organization Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is based in Britain.
In the early hours of the morning, rockets hit temporary camps for displaced people in the Kafar Jales area, in Idlib province (northwest), an AFP correspondent found. Tents had been destroyed or burned, bloodstains and rocket fragments were everywhere.
A civil defense team and residents transported the injured to nearby hospitals. In one of them, the bodies of two little girls, wrapped in blankets, had been left on the ground, the correspondent reported.
The shelling killed eight civilians, including three children, and two unidentified persons, while wounding 77 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. A previous report published by the NGO spoke of nine dead civilians.
More than 30 rockets hit various sectors west of Idlib city, including camps, according to the same group, which relies on a wide network of sources in war-torn Syria.
“We were getting ready to go to work in the morning when we heard the shots. The children were terrified and started crying,” said Abu Hamid, a 67-year-old displaced person.
“We didn’t know where to go. It was not one or two rockets, but ten. They started throwing shrapnel in all directions, we didn’t know how to protect ourselves,” he added.
The jihadist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, al-Qaeda’s former Syrian arm) and allied groups retaliated by targeting positions of regime forces, who in turn opened fire again.
Yesterday at noon, new shelling was reported in Kafar Lata, south of Idlib, in retaliation for HTS fire. One person was killed and three others were injured while picking olives, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
On Saturday, according to the same source, five Syrian soldiers were killed in southwestern Idlib, in shelling by an organization close to the HTS.
About half of Idlib and areas in the neighboring provinces of Hama, Aleppo and Latakia are controlled by HTS and less powerful anti-regime groups.
About three million people live in the region, half of whom are displaced.
Despite sporadic hostilities, a truce negotiated by Moscow, a key ally of Damascus, and Ankara, a protectorate of rebel groups, has been generally observed since March 2020 in the region.
The highly complex war in Syria over the past eleven years, involving foreign forces and jihadist groups, has claimed the lives of at least half a million people, destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure and turned millions of its residents into internally displaced persons and refugees.
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