Militants’ rocket fire kills 12 civilians in Syria

DAMASCUS: Rocket fire has killed 12 civilians in a regime-held village in northwestern Syria, state news agency SANA has said blaming former Al Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) for the atack.

SANA said 15 people were also wounded late on Sunday in the atack on Al Wadihi village south of Aleppo city and said HTS, which controls parts of Aleppo’s countryside as well as most of neighbouring Idlib, was responsible.

It published graphic pictures purporting to show some of the victims in a hospital in the atermath of the atack, including of bandaged men and children lying on stretchers, thick blankets covering their bodies.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported the same death toll - saying five children were among those killed - and also blamed militants based in rural Aleppo for the atack.

But the Britain-based monitor did not specify whether HTS or other allied extremist groups were responsible.

The atack came as Syrian government forces have been locked in clashes with HTS fighters in nearby Hama province.

More than 35 combatants, mostly regime forces, were killed on Saturday in batles in Hama’s countryside, according to the Observatory.

Parts of Aleppo, Hama and Idlib are supposed to be protected from a massive regime offensive by a buffer zone deal that Russia and Turkey signed in September.

But it was never fully implemented as militants refused to withdraw from a planned demilitarised zone.

In January, HTS extended its administrative control over the region, which includes most of Idlib province as well as adjacent slivers of Latakia, Hama and Aleppo provinces.

Separately, a car bombing near Kurdish security offices in northeast Syria on Monday wounded seven civilians, including a child, a war monitor said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the atack near the local security forces headquarters in the Kurdish-majority city of Qamishli, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The suicide bomber “tried to reach the headquarters of Kurdish security forces but surrounding checkpoints and obstacles prevented him from doing so”, Observatory head Rami Abdul Rahman said.

“When Kurdish security forces became suspicious of the vehicle, one of its passengers ran away while a second detonated the explosive,” he said.