Syrian regime and Russian air strikes Saturday killed 19 civilians, half of them children, in the country's last major opposition bastion, a Britain-based monitor and local activists said.
The air raids in the extremist-run northwest region of Idlib also wounded several others, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Air strikes by regime ally Russia killed four civilians including a child in the village of Al-Bara in the south of the region, the Observatory said.
An AFP correspondent at the scene saw rescue workers pick through the rubble of a two-storey home whose concrete roof had collapsed.
Rescuers carried away the body of a victim wrapped in a blanket on a stretcher.
Russian raids also killed two civilians including a child in the nearby area of Jabal Zawiya, the Observatory said.
Crude barrel bombs dropped by regime helicopters, meanwhile, killed five civilians including three children in the village of Abadeeta, also in the same area.
In the southeast of the embattled region, an air raid by a regime aircraft killed another child in the village of Bajghas, the Observatory said.
The monitor, which relies on sources inside Syria, says it determines the provenance of an air strike by looking at flight patterns and the aircraft and munitions involved.
The Idlib region, which is home to some three million people including many displaced by Syria's civil war, is controlled by the country's former Al-Qaeda affiliate.
The Damascus regime has repeatedly said it will eventually take back control of Idlib.
Bashar al-Assad's forces launched a blistering military campaign against the region in April, killing around 1,000 civilians and displacing more than 400,000 people from their homes.
A ceasefire announced by Moscow has largely held since late August, although the Observatory says deadly bombardment and skirmishes have persisted.
More than 200 civilians have been killed in the region since then, it says.
Meanwhile, some 25,000 civilians were displaced in northwestern Syria last week after the attacks of regime and Russia on the Idlib de-escalation zone, a Syrian NGO said.
Mohammad Halaj, director of Syria's Response Coordination Group, told Anadolu Agency that thousands of civilians were displaced in the first week of December due to attacks by Bashar al-Assad regime forces, Iran-backed terror groups and Russia.
Halaj underscored that the humanitarian crisis in Idlib was getting worse, and added: “Around 425,000 civilians are living in Maarat al-Nouman, Saraqib and Ariha districts and rural areas. If the attacks target these places with the same violence, the number of displaced will rise more.”
He added that the regime forces and Russia also target hospitals, schools, mosques, civilian defense centers and houses to prevent the return of the people.
Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and more than 10 million others displaced, according to UN officials.
Eight years of war in Syria have killed 560,000 people and driven half the pre-war population of 22 million from their homes, including more than 6 million as refugees to neighbouring countries.
Zaman Al Wasl, Agencies
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