Children among 14 civilians killed in Syria strikes

BEIRUT: Fourteen civilians, including six children and infants, were killed Saturday in air strikes in northwest Syria, targeted for months now by deadly regime and Russian bombardment, a monitor said.

Most of the children were among civilians killed when Russian aircraft raided an informal camp of internally displaced Syrians after midnight Friday, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The camp near the town of Khan Sheikhoun, in Idlib region, houses Syrians who had fled raids and clashes in neighbouring Hama province.

Hours later a man and his heavily pregnant wife were killed in the eastern Idlib town of Kefraya in air strikes carried out by unidentified aircraft, the Britain-based Observatory said.

White Helmets volunteers found the bodies of the dead woman, and her well-formed baby lying next to her open stomach the umbilical cord still attached, an AFP correspondent said.

In the north of Hama province, three civilians including a child were killed by artillery fire, the Observatory said.

Russian and Syrian regime aircraft have ramped up strikes on Idlib since the end of April, killing more than 590 civilians, while 45 others have perished from rebel fire, according to the Observatory. Regime forces have also been locked in battle with jihadists and allied rebels on the edges of the bastion, which is held by Syria´s former Al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), including the north of Hama province.

Idlib and its surrounding areas are supposed to be protected from a massive regime offensive by a September 2018 deal between Russia and rebel backer Turkey.

A buffer zone planned under that accord was never fully implemented, and the region has seen an uptick in violence.

Syria´s war has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests.

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51 injured as quake rocks southern Philippines

Ag AFP

MANILA: Fifty-one people were injured and several homes, churches and other buildings damaged on Saturday when an earthquake sent terrified residents of the southern Philippines fleeing their homes before dawn, police said. The 5.8-magnitude shallow quake struck the northeast coast of Mindanao island at 4:42 am (2042 GMT Friday), with the Philippine seismology office recording seven less intense aftershocks. Officers at the police station in Madrid town, near the epicentre, ducked beneath tables as the glass door of a filing cabinet splintered and a television set fell to the floor and shattered, police chief Lieutenant Wilson Uanite said. “We saw people running out of their homes. A number of residences sustained minor damage like cracked walls,” Uanite told AFP by telephone. Patients were also evacuated briefly at the Madrid District Hospital, which sustained cracks on its concrete walls, he added. The roof of an old car park in Madrid collapsed, causing slight damage to the town´s two fire trucks and three cars, Uanite said. The impact was also felt in four neighbouring towns, damaging homes, two Catholic churches, a hotel, a gym, a bridge and a public market, while toppled power pylons blocked a key road, the civil defence office in the region said. A restaurant tipped over into a nearby river in Cantilan town, while residents reported broken plates and glass and ceramic decorative figurines in their homes, police officer Johannes Tipon told AFP by telephone. In Cantilan, masonry from a construction site fell through the roof of a neighbouring house, injuring a girl and her father as they slept, Tipon added. The US Geological Service said Saturday´s quake occurred at a depth of 11.8 kilometres (7.3 miles). The Philippines is part of the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity that stretches from quake-prone Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin. The country´s most recent deadly quake occurred in April when at least 11 people were killed and a supermarket collapsed in a 6.3-magnitude tremor that hit a region north of the capital Manila.