Airstrikes kill 6, injure 9 in Syria’s Idlib

IDLIB, Syria

Six people were killed and nine others injured in airstrikes Tuesday in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, according to a local civil defense official.

“Warplanes struck civilian residential areas at noon,” Mustafa Haj Yusuf, director of the White Helmets civil defense agency in Idlib, told Anadolu Agency.

He said two people were killed and seven injured when warplanes struck a marketplace in the town of Ariha in Idlib.

Four civilians were also killed and two others injured in airstrikes in Kurin village, Haj said.

It remains unclear whether the attacks were carried out by regime or Russian warplanes, but a Syrian opposition observatory said in a statement shared on social media that the warplanes were Russian.

According to the observatory, whose name was not mentioned, said the planes flew from Hmeimim airbase in Latakia province and struck the towns of Ariha, Kurin Urum al-Jawz and Al-Bara.

Over the last three weeks, airstrikes on civilian settlements in the Idlib and Hama regions have left 188 civilian dead and 120 injured, according to civil defense sources.

Controlled by anti-regime armed groups, Idlib has been under intense airstrikes for the last one-and-a-half months.

Located in northern Syria near the Turkish border, Idlib was declared last May a "de-escalation zone" where acts of aggression are forbidden.

Syria has been locked in a devastating civil war since March 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

UN officials say hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict.