Raids kill dozens in Syria’s Idlib, UN to vote on ceasefire
ALEPPO, Syria: Suspected Russian air strikes have killed at least 46 people in opposition-held parts of Syria, a monitor said, as the UN Security Council prepares to vote yesterday on a resolution demanding a temporary ceasefire in Aleppo.
Syria’s government is waging a fierce offensive to recapture all of second city Aleppo, and it has so far captured more than 60 per cent of eastern districts that fell to rebels in 2012.
In Idlib province, in northwest Syria, at least 26 civilians were killed in suspected Russian strikes on the town of Kafr Nabel, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
An eyewitness told AFP warplanes hit several places in the town, including a market.
The Observator y says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to their type, location, flight patterns and the munitions involved.
The group said 18 people were also killed in suspected Russian strikes on the town of Maaret al-Numan, where an AFP photographer saw rescue workers and residents trying to pull survivors from rubble at a market.
The monitor reported two additional deaths, one in an earlier strike on Maaret al-Numan and another in Al-Naqir, also in Idlib.
It said six civilians, four of them children, had been killed in a government barrel bomb attack on the town of Al-Tamanah in the same province.
Russia, a staunch ally of President Bashar al-Assad’s government, began a military intervention in support of Damascus in September 2015.
Moscow says it is targeting “terrorists” and has dismissed reports of civilian casualties in its strikes. — AFP