Syria WAR conflict: Schoolchildren killed in Idlib air raids

Syria WAR conflict: Schoolchildren killed in Idlib air raids

0

More than 20 individuals, many of them children, have now been killed in air strikes on a rebel-held village in northwestern Syria, activists say.

A school complex was reportedly in Idlib state, among several places targeted in the village of Haas.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the raids were carried out by Syrian government or Russian warplanes.

State media quoted a military source as saying several “terrorists” had been killed when their positions were hit.

The episode comes as the government and its ally Russia said they’d continue a moratorium rebel-held eastern districts of the city of Aleppo.

The attack on Haas, about 75km (46 miles) south west of Aleppo, appears to have been extreme, reports the BBC’s James Longman in Beirut.

The rescue workers of the Syria Civil Defence, whose, said a complex containing three schools was targeted.
Activists shared photographs of bloodied corpses, many of them children, lining the floors of a makeshift treatment centre.

The Syria Civil Defence said first reports were of more than 20 people while the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at 22, including 14 children and a teacher.

Our correspondent says Idlib is among the last strongholds of the Syrian resistance.

The area is where civilians from eastern Aleppo would be sent under faltering UN ceasefire strategies.

That effort is still ongoing, our correspondent adds, but while the bombardments of eastern Aleppo of Russia have stopped the government’s ground offensive continues – meaning assistance deliveries and evacuations cannot take place.