Five members of the same family, all civilians, including three children, were killed in Russian attacks on the last major rebel stronghold in northwest Syria, rescuers and an NGO said on Tuesday.
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Russia, the main backer of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, has intervened militarily in Syria since 2015 and regularly carries out attacks against rebels in the Idlib region.
“At 10pm (1900 GMT) on December 25, Russian warplanes targeted houses inhabited by civilians” on the outskirts of the town of Armanaz in Idlib province, Abdel told AFP Halim Shehab, a White Helmet rescuer.
Rescuers pulled “six members of the same family: the father, the mother and three of their children” from the rubble, while a fourth injured child survived, according to him.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), which has an extensive network of sources in Syria, confirmed the findings of the Russian strikes on Monday evening.
The rebel stronghold of Idlib, home to around three million people, is partly controlled by the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
The Russian army and Syrian regime forces increased their attacks against this enclave last October in response to a drone attack on the Syrian army that killed more than 100 people in Homs (center).
On Sunday, the Syrian Defense Ministry announced that it had shot down seven drones launched by “terrorist organizations” against the provinces of Homs and Aleppo (north).
A ceasefire negotiated between Russia and Turkey was declared in Idlib following a regime offensive in March 2020, but it is regularly violated.
The conflict in Syria, sparked by the suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations in 2011, has left more than half a million dead and divided the country, even as the regime has regained control of much of the territory with the support of its Russian and Iranian allies .