A truck drives on a road as a plume of smoke rises from a building during a reported Russian air strike on Syria's northwestern rebel-held Idlib province, on June 25.ABDULAZIZ KETAZ/AFP/Getty Images
Russian jets bombed villages and towns near the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib on Sunday, killing at least nine civilians and wounding dozens in a major flare-up of violence in the country’s last opposition stronghold, witnesses and rescuers said.
War planes flying at high altitude, which tracking centres said were Russian Sukhoi jets, dropped bombs on a vegetable market in Jisr al-Shughour while it was crowded with shoppers ahead of the Muslim Eid feast, leaving at least nine dead and 30 injured, the Western-backed White Helmets emergency response group said.
“We’re hearing that the critically wounded have been dying after reaching the hospital,” Ahmad Yaziji of the White Helmets told The Associated Press. “It was a targeted attack in the main vegetable market where farmers from around northern Syria gather.”
Farmers rushed the wounded to the hospital in bloodied vegetable trucks, while activists shared urgent calls for blood donations.
Witnesses and rescuers said jets also hit villages in the mountainous Jabal al Zawya region and the western outskirts of Idlib city, which fall within a buffer zone carved out by Russia and Turkey that ended major fighting nearly five years ago.
Neither Syria nor Russia commented on the air strike, though Damascus says strikes in the northwest province target armed insurgent groups. The Syrian pro-government newspaper Al-Watan, citing an unidentified security source, said that the air strike targeted militants and a weapons depot. Northwestern Syria is mostly held by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al Sham, as well as Turkish-backed forces.
During past outbreaks of fighting, Damascus and Russia have said they only target insurgent groups and deny indiscriminate attacks on civilians.
More than 4 million people live in the densely populated opposition-held northwest along the Turkish border. Most were driven there by successive Russian-led campaigns that regained territory seized by rebels.
Damascus has in recent rounds of Russian-brokered talks with Ankara demanded that Turkey withdraw a formidable military presence in the last foothold of the Syrian rebellion.
Turkish troops based in the region have held back Russia and Damascus from a final assault to wrest back control of the enclave.
Tensions have mounted in recent days with Damascus sending reinforcements along front lines to confront the jihadist Hayat Tahrir al Sham, the main opposition group in the region, which it blames for mounting renewed attacks on army outposts.
Damascus says they were behind a drone strike on Friday that targeted the city of Qardaha, close to Russia’s Hmeimim air base in the coastal province of Latakia.
Moscow has grown impatient with Turkey, a major backer of the rebels, saying it is not doing enough to evict jihadists from the buffer zone, diplomatic sources said.
With files from Associated Press