At least seven civilians, including five children, have been killed and 13 others injured when Russian airstrikes hit Christian-majority villages in the west of Syria’s Idlib province.<\/p>\n
According to the opposition aircraft observatory, the Russian warplane took off from the Khmeimim air base in Latakia and hit Al-Yacoubiyah and Judayda villages early Friday.<\/p>\n
White Helmets, or Syrian Civil Defence, officials said initial reports suggested seven civilians, including five children, were killed and 13 others injured in the attack.<\/p>\n
The children are all under 10 years old, said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the British-based Observatory.<\/p>\n
Six of the victims are confirmed to be civilians, the Observatory said, adding that more people including women and children were still trapped under the rubble.<\/p>\n
The victims are mostly displaced Syrians from neighbouring Hama province, said the monitor, which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria.<\/p>\n
'De-escalation zones'<\/strong><\/p>\n During the Astana meeting in 2017, Türkiye, Russia and Iran agreed to create four "de-escalation zones" in the area that is not controlled by the Assad regime. <\/p>\n However, the Syrian regime, Iran-backed terrorists and Russia continued their attacks and took over three of the four regions and headed for Idlib.<\/p>\n Although Türkiye reached an additional agreement to strengthen the cease-fire with Russia in September 2018, the attacks intensified again in May 2019. <\/p>\n The cease-fire, however, is largely preserved now after Türkiye and Russia reached a new agreement on March 5, 2020.<\/p>\n Approximately two million civilians fleeing the attacks during the 2017-2020 period had to migrate to regions close to the Turkish border.\/agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At least seven civilians, including five children, have been killed and 13 others injured when Russian airstrikes hit Christian-majority villages in the west of Syria\u2019s Idlib province.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":58830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[414],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-our-news-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}