Atareb, Syria: Syrian army shelling killed an elderly woman and four of her children in the war-torn country’s northwest, rescue workers and a monitor said on Thursday.
The overnight bombardment targeted their house in Kfar Nuran, close to the front line in the last rebel stronghold in the western province of Aleppo.
“An elderly woman and four of her children were killed in shelling by regime forces on the outskirts of Kfar Nuran,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.
The White Helmets rescue group also said a house was hit, killing “five civilians from the same family, including three women,” and wounding another woman.
The group, which operates in rebel-held parts of Syria, said they were a family who had been displaced by fighting elsewhere in the country.
The bodies of the woman and her adult children, two daughters and two sons, were wrapped in white shrouds and taken to a location near the town of Atareb, an AFP correspondent said.
More than four million people live in rebel-held parts of northern and northwestern Syria.
The area targeted is close to the front line between government forces and Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, a jihadist group that is led by the former Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda.
The HTS controls the last pocket of armed opposition in northeastern Syria, including a large part of Idlib province and land bordering the provinces of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia.
A cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkiye was declared in Idlib after a government offensive in March 2020, but it has been repeatedly violated.
On Wednesday, a girl was killed and seven civilians wounded in government shelling of Sarmin, in the east of Idlib province, said the Observatory, a Britain-based group with a network of sources on the ground in Syria.
Civil war erupted in Syria after President Bashar Assad’s security forces crushed peaceful protests in 2011.
With backing from Iran and Russia, the Assad government has recaptured most of the territory it lost at the start of the conflict.
The war has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.
Syria army shelling kills five civilians: sources
https://arab.news/cv6rv
Syria army shelling kills five civilians: sources
- More than four million people live in rebel-held parts of northern and northwestern Syria
- The war has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions
Israel agrees to ‘limited reopening’ of Rafah crossing: PM’s office
- The announcement came after visiting US envoys reportedly pressed Israeli officials to reopen the crossing, a vital entry point for aid into Gaza
JERUSALEM: Israel said Monday it would allow a “limited reopening” of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt once it had recovered the remains of the last hostage in the Palestinian territory.
The announcement came after visiting US envoys reportedly pressed Israeli officials to reopen the crossing, a vital entry point for aid into Gaza.
Reopening Rafah forms part of a Gaza truce framework announced by US President Donald Trump in October, but the crossing has remained closed after Israeli forces took control of it during the war.
The Israeli military also said it was searching a cemetery in the Gaza Strip on Sunday for the remains of the last hostage, Ran Gvili, a non-commissioned officer in the police’s elite Yassam unit.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the reopening would depend on “the return of all living hostages and a 100 percent effort by Hamas to locate and return all deceased hostages,” Netanyahu’s office said on X.
It said Israel’s military was “currently conducting a focused operation to exhaust all of the intelligence that has been gathered in the effort to locate and return” Gvili’s body.
“Upon completion of this operation, and in accordance with what has been agreed upon with the US, Israel will open the Rafah Crossing,” it said.
