IDLIB: At least 13 people were killed by Russian airstrikes in rebel-held northwest Syria on Sunday, the bloodiest attack on the war-torn country this year, according to a war monitor.
At least nine civilians, including two children, were murdered, the majority of them were slain at a fruit and vegetable market in Jisr Al-Shugur, Idlib province.
“These Russian strikes are the deadliest in Syria this year and amount to a massacre,” Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.
According to the observatory, Russian soldiers supporting President Bashar Assad’s administration were responding to rebel drone strikes that killed four people, including two children, over the last week.
Saad Fato, a 35-year-old labourer who survived the market strike, claimed he supported efforts to rescue the injured.
“Russian shells rained on us,” he recalled, recalling that the strike occurred while he was unloading tomatoes and cucumbers.
“It was indescribable, seeing the dead, seeing the wounded,” he added, his hands still stained with the blood of the dead.
A reporter on the scene reported plumes of black smoke rising from the area and ambulances rushing the injured from the market to the hospital, their sirens blaring.
According to Abdel Rahman, whose group depends on a large network of sources within Syria, six civilians were murdered in Jisr Al-Shughur and three rebel fighters were killed nearby by Russian airstrikes.
According to Abdel Rahman, three civilians, including two children, and one rebel fighter were killed in a hit on the outskirts of Idlib.
He stated the fighter was a member of the Turkistan Islamic Party, an Uighur-dominated jihadist group, and that the parents of the deceased children were also members.
According to Abdel Rahman, at least 30 civilians were injured in Sunday’s strikes, and the death toll is certain to grow.
Ahmed Yazigi of Jisr Al-Shughur’s civil defence previously stated that the strikes killed nine individuals, without indicating whether the toll included combatants.
The action, according to Yazigi, was “a direct attack on the popular market, which provides a basic source of income for farmers.”
With Russian and Iranian help, the Assad regime has reclaimed much of the ground lost early in Syria’s conflict, which started in 2011 when it ruthlessly suppressed pro-democracy protesters.
Russia has regularly targeted Syria’s final bastion of armed opposition to the regime in the northwest over the years.
However, until the recent Russian strikes, lethal attacks on civilians have been restricted this year.
On Saturday, a Russian airstrike in the Idlib province killed two civilians.
Source: AFP