Airstrike on Syrian market kills at least 28
A SYRIAN monitoring group and the opposition’s Civil Defence group have said an airstrike on a market in the northwest of the country has killed at least 28 people.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrike on a market in the village of Harem killed 28 people, including 11 children and women. It added that the figure could still rise since many of the wounded were in critical condition.
The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defence, also known as White Helmets said the airstrike killed 37 and caused wide material damage. It said most of the dead were women or children.
Harem is in the province of Idlib that is mostly controlled by rebels and has been subjected to intense airstrikes recently.
Meanwhile, Syrian rebel fighters and their families began leaving a key Eastern Ghouta town yesterday, after agreeing with the government to give up their fight for the opposition stronghold.
Around 1,600 fighters from the Ahrar al-Sham Islamist group, and some 6,000 of their relatives, were expected to have been evacuated by the end of the day, in the first such deal between the two sides.
Buses transported the men, women and children out of the enclave through government territory and on to opposition-held Idlib province in the north-west of the country. Idlib, close to the Turkish border, is the rebels’ largest remaining redoubt and where thousands of rebels have been sent by the regime under socalled reconciliation deals.
A spokesman for Ahrar al-Sham, which had controlled Harasta, said the fighters were allowed to leave with their weapons and the roughly 20,000 civilians who wished to remain in the city were given guarantees of safety from the regime and Russia.