Russian air strikes kill 17 civilians in Syria

BEIRUT: Russian air strikes killed 17 civilians on Tuesday in northwestern Syria, as renewed violence tightened the noose around the country’s last major rebel-held bastion and deepened an already dire humanitarian crisis.

Retaliatory rocket attacks blamed on rebels and jihadists killed three more civilians in the government-held city of Aleppo in northern Syria, state news agency SANA said.

The spike in violence in the neighbouring provinces of Aleppo and Idlib follow so far unsuccessful diplomatic attempts to reduce hostilities in the flashpoint region, with the latest truce in theory going into effect less than two weeks ago.

Most of Idlib and parts of Aleppo province are still controlled by factions opposed to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, including a group that includes onetime members of al-Qaeda’s former Syria franchise.

The Damascus regime, which controls around 70 percent of the country after nearly nine years of war, has repeatedly vowed to recapture the region. On Tuesday, air strikes by regime-ally Russia on a rebel-held region in Aleppo’s western countryside killed eight members of the same family sheltering in a house, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Six children were among those killed in the raid on Kfar Taal village, where three girls already died a day earlier in strikes, according to the Britain-based monitor.

Three other victims where killed in separate Russian air strikes on western Aleppo on Tuesday, while raids also by Moscow in a southern region of Idlib killed two more people, the Observatory said.

“Over the past three days, the bombardment on Idlib and its surroundings, including in western Aleppo, has been exclusively Russian,” saud Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman. “They want to push rebels and jihadists away from the city of Aleppo and from the motorway linking Aleppo to Damascus,” Abdel Rahman said.