ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - At least seven civilians were killed and over 40 injured on Saturday in Syrian army bombardment on the northwestern Idlib province, the last remaining rebel bastion in the area, a war monitor reported. “Seven people including two children and a woman were killed in Idlib and one man was killed in Sarmin town, while 42 civilians were injured,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Britain-based war monitor. The strikes were part of a total of 35 missiles fired by the Syrian regime on residential and industrial areas of Idlib city, according to SOHR. Half of Idlib province, as well as parts of Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia provinces, are the last rebel-held bastions in the country after President Bashar al-Assad seized back swathes of territory over the course of the brutal Syrian civil war, which erupted in 2011. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, is the prominent force among dozens of different rebel factions operating in the rebel-held northwest. It controls large swathes of Idlib and parts of Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia provinces. It has been internationally recognized as a terrorist organization. A ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey has been in place in northwest Syria since March 2020, but the area has witnessed a recent flare-up in violence. Over 13 million Syrians have been displaced since the start of the civil war, more than six million of which are refugees who have fled the war-torn country, according to a report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
