BEIRUT: Eight civilians, including a child, have been killed during exchanges of fire between the army and rebels in Syria’s northwest, while 19 others also injured, a war monitor said on Monday.
The fighting took place between the Syrian army and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist group led by Al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that an elderly man, a woman and her young daughter were killed and 10 other civilians were injured in a bombardment by the HTS on Nubul and Zahraa villages in Aleppo province, which is controlled by the Syrian government.
HTS and other groups control swathes of Idlib province and parts of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces.
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According to the Observatory three civilians were killed while nine other injured in the retaliatory bombing by the Syrian army in Darat Izza town in Aleppo.
It further said the Army artillery fire also killed two other civilians in the Aleppo village of Burj Haidar.
Half million people killed in Syrian conflict
More than half a million people have been killed in the Syria since the conflict started in 2011.
Last week, Russian air strikes on Idlib province, killed five civilians said the Observatory.
Moscow is one of Bashar al-Assad key supporters, providing him with military, political and economic assistance in the country’s civil war.
Russia’s intervention in the war has helped forces to retake the control of the much of the territory they lost in the conflict.
A ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey was reached in Idlib in March 2020, but it has been repeatedly violated.
