11 lose lives in Syria airstrikes as Daesh loses territory Russian frigate leaves for Mediterranean to boost Assad defense
BEIRUT: The Syrian regime’s air raids killed at least 11 people overnight, mostly civilians, a monitoring group said Monday, while the military said its forces made advances in Aleppo province.
“Regime warplanes carried out airstrikes after midnight on several areas in the town of Ariha” in Idlib province, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights’ head Rami Abdel Rahman.
“The preliminary toll is 11 killed, including at least seven civilians,” three of them children, he said.
Others were still missing and rescue teams were searching for anyone trapped under the rubble, Abdel Rahman added.
Leith Fares, a rescue worker in Ariha, told AFP his team had pulled at least 20 wounded people out of the rubble.
“We have been working since 3 a.m. (0100 GMT) to rescue victims still under the rubble of two four-story buildings that totally collapsed on the residents inside,” he said.
“We are still looking for two families, estimated at eight to 10 members each, that are still trapped,” Fares said.
The deaths come two days after 10 civilians were killed in regime airstrikes on Ariha, held since spring 2015 by an anti-regime coalition dominated by extremists.
Idlib province has been battered by heavy airstrikes in recent weeks, with intensifying bombing raids by regime warplanes in particular, according to the Observatory.
It has also been rocked by infighting between opposition and radical factions, including Al-Qaeda’s former Syrian affiliate, Fateh Al-Sham Front. A Syrian military source told AFP on Monday that the army had “seized 18 towns and villages, including the town of Taduf and a number of strate- gic hilltops in eastern Aleppo province, totaling about 600 sq. km.”
Taduf, which lies near Al-Bab, had been held by Daesh. The terror group also withdrew from nearly two dozen villages near the town of Manbij on Monday, in what the Observatory called a sign of “swift collapse” of the terrorists’ ranks.
Manbij is held by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed alli- ance of Kurdish and Arab fighters.
“Regime forces moved into those 23 villages, linking up with SDF forces in the area,” said Abdel Rahman.
The regime’s advance in the area is, according to the Observatory, part of a bid to block the Turkishbacked forces from expanding their zones of control in Aleppo province.
But regime troops are also trying to advance east to reach Daesh-held Khafsah, the main station pumping water into Aleppo city, Abdel Rahman said. Residents of the northern city have been left without water for 42 days, after Daesh cut the supply at Khafsah — around 90 km away.
Meanwhile, the Russian frigate Admiral Grigorovich left the port of Sevastopol in Crimea on Monday for the Mediterranean where it will join the country’s naval forces deployed near the Syrian coast, a naval official said. A Reuters witness saw the ship leaving its moorings in the naval port of Sevastopol.
“It (the frigate) will be operating as part of the permanent Russian Navy force in the Mediterranean,” the Interfax news agency quoted the navy’s Cpt. Vyacheclav Truhachev, a spokesman for the Black Sea fleet, as saying.
The frigate armed with Kalibr (Caliber) cruise missiles was deployed to the Mediterranean Sea last November as part of Russia’s naval task force to Syria where it launched missile strikes against Daesh targets.
The Admiral Grigorovich is the first in the class of six frigates commissioned by the Russian navy in 2010 for its Black Sea Fleet.