26 April 2017•Update: 26 April 2017
By Mohamed Misto and Ayse Aktas
IDLIB, Syria
At least six people were killed and scores more injured in an airstrike reportedly carried out by the Assad regime that targeted a refugee camp in Syria’s Idlib province, according to local civil-defense sources.
Warplanes targeted the city of Maaret al-Numan in southern Idlib, which is home to some 3,000 people, Obeid Zakriya, a civil defense official in Maaret al-Numan, told Anadolu Agency on Wednesday.
"At least six civilians were killed and 35 others injured,” Zakriya said, adding that civil-defense teams were still in the process of rushing injured people to nearby medical centers.
According to Zakriya, refugees from Idlib and Aleppo provinces had been staying at the targeted refugee camp.
“Regime warplanes targeted the camp with three parachute mines,” Hamid Kuteyni, another civil defense official in Idlib, told Anadolu Agency.
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.
Since the beginning of the conflict, Iran -- along with Lebanon’s Shia Hezbollah militia -- has supported the Assad regime.
In 2015, Russia formally entered the conflict, providing regime forces with extensive air support.
Several rounds of peace talks -- in Geneva and Kazakh capital Astana -- have so far failed to end the conflict, in which hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians are believed to have been killed to date.
