BEIRUT, SARMIN: Syrian regime forces fired land-to-land missiles on an opposition-held village in the country’s northwest on Wednesday, hitting a school and killing at least eight people. The victims included a teacher and four children, according to a war monitor and opposition activists.
The attack in Idlib province, the last opposition stronghold in Syria, was part of an ongoing offensive in which Syrian troops have captured more than 40 villages and hamlets over the past two weeks.
Part of the building in the town of Sarmin had been turned into a shelter for the displaced, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Sixteen people were wounded including some in critical condition, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
An AFP correspondent in Sarmin saw the remains of a missile several meters long fuming in a nearby olive grove.
In the latest round of violence in Syria’s nearly nine-year-old war, regime forces have upped their deadly bombardment of the northwestern opposition bastion of Idlib in recent weeks.
In December alone, the violence pushed some 284,000 from their homes in the militant-run region of some 3 million people, the UN says.
Many of them have fled from the town of Maaret Al-Numan, toward which the Syrian troops have been steadily advancing, UN humanitarian agency OCHA says.
The mass movement of people has seen public buildings such as mosques, garages, wedding halls and schools turned into shelters, according to the OCHA.
Regime ally Russia announced a cease-fire for Idlib in late August after months of deadly Russian and regime bombardment that killed around 1,000 civilians.
But sporadic clashes and bombardment persisted throughout the autumn before a spike in violence in the past month, the Observatory says.
The UN has warned of the growing risk of a humanitarian catastrophe in the region, which lies along the Turkish border.
Syria’s civil war has killed more than 370,000 people since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
In total 11,215 people including more than 1,000 children were killed during the war last year, although it was the least deadly year on record since the beginning of the conflict.
Syrian troops have been bombarding parts of Idlib since last month, with the shelling and airstrikes intensifying since the ground offensive began on Dec. 19.
Elsewhere in northern Syria, a car bombing on Wednesday in the town of Suluk, controlled by Turkey-backed opposition fighters, killed three people, according to Syrian state media and the Observatory.
Areas controlled by Turkey-backed fighters have witnessed several explosions, with dozens killed and wounded in the past weeks. Turkey has blamed Syrian Kurdish fighters for the attacks. They deny the charges.
