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2 children killed in Syria's de-escalation zone

At least two children were killed in airstrikes carried out by the Bashar al-Assad regime forces in de-escalation zone in northern Syria on Wednesday, according to sources with the White Helmets civil defense agency. 

According to the sources, the airstrikes were conducted in Kafraziba village of Idlib province.

They said the death toll is expected to rise.

Turkey and Russia agreed last September to turn Idlib into a de-escalation zone where acts of aggression are expressly prohibited.

The Syrian regime and its allies, however, have consistently broken the terms of the cease-fire, launching frequent attacks inside the de-escalation zone.

The de-escalation zone is currently inhabited by about 4 million civilians, including hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the regime forces from their cities and towns throughout the war-weary country over recent 
years.

The United Nations says the Assad offensive northwest Syria has killed at least 450 civilians and displaced more than 440,000 people.

On Tuesday, two-thirds of the United Nations Security Council - including the United States, Britain and France - asked Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday to investigate attacks on U.N.-supported medical facilities in northwest Syria, diplomats said.

The Security Council has been deadlocked on Syria with Russia and China - two of the body's five veto powers along with Britain, France and the United States - shielding Assad's government from any action during eight years of war.

Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Belgium, Peru, Poland, Kuwait, Dominican Republic and Indonesia delivered a demarche - a formal diplomatic petition - to Guterres over the lack of an inquiry into attacks on U.N.-supported facilities.

"At least fourteen U.N.-supported facilities on the list of deconflicted facilities have been damaged or destroyed in northwest Syria since the end of April," they told Guterres, according to the agreed request seen by Reuters.

"We therefore respectfully request that you consider launching an internal U.N. investigation into attacks that have damaged or destroyed U.N.-supported facilities in northwest Syria and report back promptly," they said.

They noted that in 2016 former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had used his discretionary power to open an inquiry into an attack on a Syrian Arab Red Crescent humanitarian convoy in Aleppo.

Guterres' spokesman Farhan Haq confirmed representatives of 10 member states had met with the secretary-general. "We will consider their request," Haq said.

While the United Nations has shared the locations of humanitarian facilities with the parties to the conflict, U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock has told the Security Council that dozens of healthcare facilities have been struck since April.

"Is that information used as it's intended, to protect facilities ... or is it being used to target facilities?" Lowcock said to reporters on Tuesday after briefing the council for the seventh time since the Syrian government offensive began.

Russia and Syria have said their forces are not targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure and questioned the sources used by the United Nations to verify attacks on health centers.

An array of insurgents have a foothold in northwestern Syria. The most powerful is the jihadist Tahrir al-Sham, the latest incarnation of the former Nusra Front which was part of al Qaeda until 2016.

British U.N. Ambassador Karen Pierce told the Security Council on Tuesday that Ja'afari's letter was an admission of Syrian government attacks on hospitals.

"That is a war crime and it deserves the utmost, deep investigation so that those units responsible, those military commanders responsible, and the politicians who give them their instructions, can be brought to justice," she said.

Syria's war has killed more than 560,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with a brutal crackdown on anti-regime protests.
 

Zaman Al Wasl, Agencies

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