Bombing kills 50 rebel fighters

BEIRUT — An air strike on a rebel training camp in northwestern Syria on Monday killed more than 50 Turkishbacked fighters and wounded nearly as many, in one of the heaviest blows to the opposition’s strongest groups, a spokesman and a war monitor said.

The opposition vowed to retaliate for the attack on Faylaq alSham, blaming Russia for the daytime strike. There was no immediate comment from Russia or Turkey, which support opposite sides in Syria’s conflict.

Youssef Hammoud, a spokesman for the Syrian opposition, said the strike in the northwestern part of Idlib province, the last rebel enclave in Syria, targeted a military training camp. Faylaq alSham is the largest Turkeybacked armed group and one of the most disciplined and best trained.

Turkey has long supported Syrian rebel forces in Syria and has used many of those fighters to bolster its military campaigns in Libya and Azerbaijan.

The camp, at Jebel alDweila not far from the Turkish border, was hosting training sessions for new recruits, according to a war monitor and another opposition spokesman. Leaders of the camp were among those killed, according to Hammoud.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war in Syria, gave a higher toll, at 78 fighters dead and nearly 90 wounded. It said it also suspected the strike was carried out by Russia, which is a close ally of Syrian President Bashar alAssad in the country’s civil war.

Turkey and Russia brokered a truce in Idlib earlier this year to halt a government offensive that displaced hundreds of thousands in the already overcrowded enclave. Around a dozen Turkish observation points were deployed inside Idlib to monitor the truce, which remained shaky.