Airstrike in Syria pounds market, killing 11

BEIRUT — A Syrian government airstrike hit an open-air market in the country’s northwest Saturday, killing at least 11 people, most of them children, according to activists.

The town of Ariha has been targeted over the past week as the government escalates its offensive against the country’s last rebel stronghold.

The airstrike in Ariha left an 18-month-old girl with an amputated leg, according to Dr. Mohamad Abrash, a surgeon and chief of Idlib’s central hospital. He said the girl’s father and brother died in the bombing, and her mother is in the ICU in the bed opposite her with a chest injury and internal bleeding in the head.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war, and another activist collective, called Ariha Today, said most of those killed were children. Ariha Today named six children under the age of 14 who it said were killed in the airstrike.

Ariha has been targeted over the past week as Syria’s government looks to regain momentum in its stalled offensive, which began in late April. It is one of the main towns in Idlib province, which with the surrounding rural areas of Hama province, are home to 3 million people.

Separately, doctors said two medics and an ambulance driver were killed when an airstrike targeted their vehicle in Kfar Zita, a town on the front line in Hama province, at the edge of the rebel stronghold.

In the Syrian government’s airstrike campaign, backed by Russia, warplanes have targeted medical centers, water plants and residential areas, in what the U.N. and rights groups call a campaign that amounts to war crimes.

The rebel enclave is dominated by al-Qaida-linked militants and other jihadi groups. The government has said it is targeting terrorist sites.

Most of the civilians living in the rebel stronghold have already been displaced by other bouts of violence.