Homs: Regime missile attack kills 8 civilians in al-Waer neighborhood

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Syrian regime on Wednesday has fired 6 Surface-to-surface missiles on al-Waer neighborhood of Homs city, killing 8 civilians, including a child and woman, local activists said.

The missile attack has also left 25 people wounded in the last rebel stronghold in the central city.

Civil Defense volunteer group that tracks regime violations in the northern countryside of Homs said 27 people, including 8 children and 6 women, had been killed in January.

Regime warplanes conducted 56 and the Russian warplanes conducted 12 raids.

In the next door province of Hams, regime’s vacuum missiles killed three people on Tuesday, activists said as regime and rebels swapped dozens of women prisoners and hostages, some of them with their children.

The missile attack targeted the villages of al-Jaberiya, Aydoun and Senjar Farms.

Also, the aerial bombing on Kafr Zeita made the main hospital out of service as most equipment and medical stuff were destroyed, Free Health Directorate in Hama said.

In return, rebel have hit pro-regime villages with mortar rounds and heavy machine guns.

SWAP DEAL

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based opposition-aligned group, said regime representatives and rebel officials exchanged 112 women in the rebel-held Qalaat al-Madiq town in rural Hama. Many had been detained for years.

About half were released from government prisons and then taken to opposition-held areas, the Observatory said.

In return, the others were set free by various rebel groups and shuttled to government-controlled areas along the coast.

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Such exchanges were rare in the nearly six-year-old war, but had been occurring more often in recent months, the Observatory said.

The war pits Bashar Assad's regime, backed by Russia and Iran, against an array of mostly Sunni rebel groups, including some backed by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.

The conflict has killed about half million people, made more than half of Syrian homeless and created the world's worst refugee crisis.