BEIRUT: The Syrian army shelled the Idlib region Thursday killing seven civilians, three of them children, in its third deadly bombardment of the rebel bastion in a week, a monitor said.
Several people were seriously wounded in the morning bombardment of the village of Iblin, south of Idlib, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The army has stepped up its bombing of the northwestern enclave since Saturday when President Bashar Assad took the oath of office for a new term vowing to make “liberating those parts of the homeland that still need to be” one of his top priorities.
The same day strikes on the Idlib villages of Sarja and Ehsin killed 14 civilians, seven of them children.
Two days earlier shelling of Idlib and the town of Fuaa further north killed nine civilians, three of them children, the Observatory said.
Controlled by an alliance dominated by Al-Qaeda’s former Syria affiliate, the Idlib region is home to nearly three million people, two-thirds of them displaced from other parts of the country.
A March 2020 deal brokered by the rival sides’ main foreign backers Russia and Turkey has eased fighting on the front line but the region remains in the government’s sights.
Elsewhere in the country, Kurdish-led forces control a large swathe of the east after expelling the Daesh group from the region.
And Turkey and its Syrian proxies hold a long strip of territory along the northern border.
Syria army shells rebel bastion, killing seven: monitor
https://arab.news/rj333
Syria army shells rebel bastion, killing seven: monitor
- The army has stepped up its bombing of the northwestern enclave since Saturday
UN rights chief Shocked by ‘unbearable’ Darfur atrocities
- Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur
PORT SUDAN: Nearly three years of war have put the Sudanese people through “hell,” the UN’s rights chief said on Sunday, blasting the vast sums spent on advanced weaponry at the expense of humanitarian aid and the recruitment of child soldiers.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that has left tens of thousands of people dead and around 11 million displaced.
Speaking in Port Sudan during his first wartime visit, UN Human Rights commissioner Volker Turk said the population had endured “horror and hell,” calling it “despicable” that funds that “should be used to alleviate the suffering of the population” are instead spent on advanced weapons, particularly drones.
More than 21 million people are facing acute food insecurity, and two-thirds of Sudan’s population is in urgent need of humanitarian aid, according to the UN.
In addition to the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis, Sudan is also facing “the increasing militarization of society by all parties to the conflict, including through the arming of civilians and recruitment and use of children,” Turk added.
He said he had heard testimony of “unbearable” atrocities from survivors of attacks in Darfur, and warned of similar crimes unfolding in the Kordofan region — the current epicenter of the fighting.
Testimony of these atrocities must be heard by “the commanders of this conflict and those who are arming, funding and profiting from this war,” he said.
Mediation efforts have failed to produce a ceasefire, even after international outrage intensified last year with reports of mass killings, rape, and abductions during the RSF’s takeover of El-Fasher in Darfur.
“We must ensure that the perpetrators of these horrific violations face justice regardless of the affiliation,” Turk said on Sunday, adding that repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure could constitute “war crimes.”
He called on both sides to “cease intolerable attacks against civilian objects that are indispensable to the civilian population, including markets, health facilities, schools and shelters.”
Turk again warned on Sunday that crimes similar to those seen in El-Fasher could recur in volatile Kordofan, where the RSF has advanced, besieging and attacking several key cities.
Hundreds of thousands face starvation across the region, where more than 65,000 people have been displaced since October, according to the latest UN figures.
