Five civilians were killed in attacks by Assad regime forces on residential areas located inside northern Syria’s de-escalation zones, local sources said Thursday.
5 DEAD
Overnight airstrikes and artillery attacks targeted the villages of Kansafra, Termela, Bsekla Has and Abdin in Idlib province, along with the village of Al-Huwaiz and the town of Kafrnabuda in Hama province, sources said.
Airstrikes targeting positions in Kafrnabuda and Bsekla were carried out by Russian warplanes stationed at the Khmeimim Airbase in the western Latakia province, opposition sources said. In a related development, the National Liberation Front, a faction of the Free Syrian Army, reportedly managed to repel an advance on Kafrnabuda by regime ground forces.
Last September, Turkey and Russia agreed to turn Idlib into a de-escalation zone in which acts of aggression would be strictly prohibited. Syria has only just begun to emerge from a devastating conflict that began in 2011 when the Assad regime cracked down on demonstrators with unexpected severity.