Early Sunday morning, rockets hit camps for temporarily displaced people in the Kafr Jales region of Idlib province (northwest). The strikes killed nine civilians, including three children, and wounded dozens, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH). Tents were destroyed and burned, and bloodstains and rocket tips were visible, an AFP reporter at the scene testified.
Two children were among the victims
Civil defense and residential teams rescued the injured and shifted them to nearby hospitals. The bodies of the two girls were wrapped in blankets and laid on the ground, an AP reporter at the scene said.
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The shelling wounded 75 people, and the Observatory said more than 30 rockets fell in several areas west of Idlib, including camps. The region is home to three million people, half of whom are displaced.
“We don’t know where to run”
“We were getting ready in the morning to go to work when we heard shooting. The children started screaming in fear,” said Abu Hameed, 67, a displaced person from the camps. “We didn’t know where to run. It wasn’t one or two rockets, but ten. Fragments started flying everywhere and we didn’t know how to protect ourselves,” he added.
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By the end of the morning, gunfire by Bashar al-Assad regime forces continued against several factions in the region after the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied rebel factions retaliated by targeting positions in Syria. Army.
The authority’s firing came a day after five regime forces members were killed in bombings by an HTS-affiliated group southwest of Idlib, according to the Observatory. Half of Idlib and the neighboring provinces of Hama, Aleppo and Latakia are dominated by HTS, the former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, and other less influential rebel factions.
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Despite sporadic clashes, a ceasefire negotiated by Damascus’s ally Moscow – and Ankara’s support for rebel groups – has been largely respected in the region since March 2020. Since 2011, the war in Syria has killed nearly half a million people and displaced millions more in and out of the country.
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