SOHR: Ten killed in Syrian missile strikes

A Syrian regime’s rocket fire killed ten people on Sunday, including three children, in makeshift camps for IDPs in the country’s last major rebel-held bastion, a war observer said.

The dead included eight civilians and two unidentified individuals, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which revised a previous toll of nine dead.

Another 77 people were injured in rocket attacks.

More than 30 rockets exploded in several areas in the morning, including the camps located west of the city of Idlib in northwestern Syria.

Later in the morning, shelling continued in several locations in the area, and rebels targeted government positions in retaliation for the attacks, according to the Observatory, which has a wide network of sources on the ground.

In the late afternoon, regime forces launched another round of attacks on Kafr Lata in southern Idlib, killing one person and injuring three others while picking olives, the observer said.

The monitor said the shelling came in response to renewed fire from the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by ex-members of Syria’s former al-Qaeda franchise.

An UKTN correspondent in Kafr Jales saw destroyed and burnt tents, bloodstains and rocket debris on the spot.

– ‘Children scream’ –

At a nearby hospital, the correspondent saw the bodies of two young girls.

“We woke up this morning and were getting ready to go to work when we started hearing the sounds of strikes,” said camp resident Abu Hamid.

“The kids were scared and started screaming,” the 67-year-old continued.

‘We didn’t know where to go. It wasn’t one or two missiles, but a dozen. The shrapnel flew from all directions. We didn’t know how to protect ourselves.’

The latest group of armed opposition to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime includes large parts of Idlib province and parts of neighboring Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces.

HTS is the dominant group in the area, but other rebel groups are also active.

According to the Observatory, the rocket fire came a day after five members of the Syrian armed forces were killed in shelling by a group affiliated with HTS.

About three million people live in the Idlib region, about half of whom are displaced.

They are among the millions displaced at home and abroad by the war in Syria since 2011. Nearly half a million people have died.

With Russian and Iranian support, Damascus has regained much of the ground lost in the early stages of the conflict in Syria, which erupted in 2011 when the government brutally suppressed pro-democracy protests.

Despite periodic clashes, a 2020 ceasefire in the northwest has largely been held up by Moscow and Turkey – who support the anti-Assad rebels.