7 Children Among 25 Civilians Killed In Regime, Russia Attacks In Syria's Idlib
19 June 2019Anadolu Agencies
Airstrikes and rocket fire by the regime of Bashar Assad and its ally Russia
on Monday killed 25 civilians, including seven children, in northwestern
Syria's opposition-held Idlib province, a monitor said.
Local residents and civil rescuers said war planes flying at high altitude,
which monitors said were Russian Sukhoi jets, dropped bombs on the village of
Jabala in southern Idlib, with rescuer teams so far pulling out 13 bodies,
including women and children.
Russian jets were also behind several raids that hit the town of Khan
Sheikhoun, Kfar Batikh and several other villages that left at least another
12 civilians dead, according to another local rescuer.
The Idlib region is supposed to be protected by a months-old buffer zone deal
between Turkey and Russia. That region includes most of Idlib province as well
as adjacent parts of Latakia, Hama and Aleppo governorates.
Rescuers say the major aerial campaign that Moscow has thrown its weight
behind since it was launched in earnest at the end of April has killed over
1,500 people with more than half of the death toll civilians.
Residents and local and international aid agencies that support the rebel-held
areas say the sustained campaign that has bombed schools and knocked down
medical centers was to smash the spirit of civilians in opposition areas.
Russia and the Assad regime deny allegations of indiscriminate bombing of
civilian areas or a campaign to paralyze everyday life in opposition-held
areas.
More than 300,000 people have fled the frontlines to the safety of areas near
the border with Turkey, U.N. and aid agencies say.
Analysts predict the regime will continue to chip away at the region, but say
it is unlikely to unleash a major assault.
Syria's war has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions since
it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
Regime attacks kill 17 civilians in Syria's Idlib
Attacks by the Assad regime and its allies left 17 civilians dead Monday --
and another 35 injured -- in opposition-held areas of Syria's northern Idlib
province, according to the White Helmets civil-defense agency.
Regime warplanes struck residential parts of southern Idlib, the civil-defense
agency said, including the towns of Maarret al-Numan and Maarrat Hurma.
The Syrian regime and Iran-backed militia groups reportedly conducted several
attacks -- both by air and by land -- in the districts of Khan Shaykhun,
Khirbat Abidin, Ash Shaykh Mustafa, Muqayyar, Kafr Zayta and Ltamenah.
The civil-defense teams are concerned that the death toll may rise as the
search and rescue efforts are ongoing.
Some 1.5 million people currently reside in Idlib, roughly half of whom have
been displaced from other parts of the country.
Turkey and Russia agreed last September to turn Idlib into a de-escalation
zone in which acts of aggression would be expressly prohibited.
The Syrian regime, however, has consistently broken the terms of the
ceasefire, launching frequent attacks inside the de-escalation zone.
Syria has only just begun to emerge from a devastating conflict that began in
early 2011 when the Assad regime cracked down on demonstrators with unexpected
severity.
Regime forces kill 4 civilians in Idlib, burn decares of farmland
The Bashar Assad regime has continued to terrorize the northwestern province
of Idlib through constant airstrikes and bombardments. In the latest attacks,
four civilians have reportedly been killed, while farmland in the southern
parts of the province have been burned using the banned substance napalm.
According to the White Helmets, a Syrian civil defense group, the air attacks
killed civilians in the Khan Shaykhun district and neighboring villages, like
Fleifel. A Syrian opposition group claimed that the attacks were made by
Russian warplanes that took off from Russia's Khmeimim Air Base in Latakia. It
can be easily determined whether an attack was carried out by the Russians or
regime air forces in Idlib. The regime's Russian warplanes are outdated and
are not able to carry out high-altitude attacks.
They descend, get closer to the target and only attack wide areas. Since there
are no pinpoint attacks and a large amount of ammunition, the damage spreads
to a wide area. Furthermore, regime warplanes make a lot of noise while
descending.
The Russian warplanes' sound, on the other hand, does not reach the ground at
all since they do not get closer to the target at the time of the attack. The
first sound that is heard during Russian attacks is the explosion of the
bombs. Another difference between the two is that while regime warplanes get
closer to the targets one by one, Russian warplanes take off in groups of at
least two planes and attack. From the remaining ammunition that was used in
the attacks, it can be understood that the outdated ones belong to regime
forces, while the modern ones belong to the Russians.
Apart from the airstrikes, the Bashar Assad regime eradicates the labor of
farmers in the region by burning plantation areas within the borders of the
Idlib de-escalation zone. Regime forces have been accused of using napalm in
the northern and western rural areas of Hama and Idlib's southern rural areas,
preventing farmers from collecting their products, which eventually causes
thousands of civilians to starve.
In 1980, the U.N. Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) banned the
use of napalm bombs on civilians. Labeled as "hunger bombs" by locals,
hundreds of decares of farmland have been damaged by the bombings, while some
products turned to ash due to fires. According to information provided by the
White Helmets, other than attacks on farmland there have been over 24 attacks
on health facilities, six attacks on civil defense centers, 29 attacks on
schools and much more on other civilian infrastructure in the past month,
where the number of fatalities has exceeded 250 during the Bashar Assad
regime's indiscriminate attacks targeting civilians and residential areas.
Civilians had to flee their hometowns in both northern rural Hama and rural
southern Idlib.
As a result, over 307,000 people have been displaced in the past two months
with the majority in the past four weeks, and over 200,000 of them are living
in the open with no shelter, as internally displaced sites close to the
Turkish border are extremely overcrowded and are already running at double
capacity. Regime forces have been using the pretext of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)
militants holed up inside Idlib to carry out intermittent attacks on the city,
intensifying their attacks since April 26. While heavy airstrikes have
worsened the humanitarian situation, Bashar Assad regime troops and opposition
forces have been struggling for territorial gains in Idlib.
©
EsinIslam.Com
Add Comments