Sarmeen (Syria): Air strikes by the regime and its Russian ally on Sunday killed at least nine civilians in the last major opposition bastion of Idlib in northwestern Syria, a Britain-based war monitor said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said seven of those killed were all members of one family in the town of Sarmeen in Idlib
province. A correspondent saw a man weeping as rescue workers pulled bodies from a crumpled two-storey building.
They belonged to his nine-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old son. A regime air strike also killed a child in the town of Binnish, and a Russian raid took the life of a woman in the town of Atareb, the Observatory said. The Russian-backed regime and militant forces are advancing on the rebel-held town of Saraqeb amid a double-pronged push into Idlib province, home to some three million people, half of whom have been displaced from other parts of the
country. The fighting in Idlib and in western Aleppo over the past week has killed 205 pro-regime militants and 220 anti-regime combatants, the SOHR said.
UNICEF said Saturday that violence this week forced 6,500 children to flee daily, bringing the total number of displaced children in northwest Syria to more than 300,000 since early December.