Assad air strikes kill 9 civilians in Ariha

(Zaman Al Wasl)- At least nine civilians were killed and 20 more wounded in regime air strikes on the town of Ariha in northern Idlib province, rescuing agency said Sunday.

Multiple neighbourhoods were targeted in the city, which is located in the Idlib countryside, filling its streets with rubble.

White Helmets volunteers went to the sites that were hit to recover bodies and help the wounded, said Samer al-Hariri, head of White Helmets volunteers in Ariha.

Wrecked cars, damaged buildings and destroyed shop façades remained behind.

Samer al-Hariri, head of White Helmets volunteers in Ariha, said "The military jets targeted Ariha city in a raid, using highly explosive missiles on civilian homes. There is no preliminary count for the martyrs and the wounded because the targeting was spread through several neighbourhoods in Ariha city."

The United Nations has warned of the growing risk of a humanitarian catastrophe in the region, which lies along the Turkish border.

In the latest round of violence in Syria's nearly nine-year-old war, regime forces have upped their deadly bombardment of the northwestern opposition bastion of Idlib in recent weeks.

In December alone, the violence pushed some 284,000 from their homes in the jihadist-run region of some three million people, the United Nations says.

The mass movement of people has seen public buildings such as mosques, garages, wedding halls and schools turned into shelters, UN humanitarian agency OCHA says.

Regime ally Russia announced a ceasefire for Idlib in late August after months of deadly Russian and regime bombardment that killed around 1,000 civilians.

But sporadic clashes and bombardment persisted throughout the autumn before a spike in violence in the past month, the Observatory says.

In total 11,215 people including more than 1,000 children were killed during the war last year, although it was the least deadly year on record since the beginning of the conflict.

Almost nine years of civil war in Syria has left more than 380,000 people dead including over 115,000 civilians, a war monitor said in a new toll Saturday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of sources across the country, said they included around 22,000 children and more than 13,000 women.

Zaman Al Wasl, Agencies

Zaman Al Wasl