Idlib Offensive: Assad airstrikes kill woman and her two children

(Zaman Al Wasl)- A mother and her two children were killed Saturday in airstrikes on northern Idlib province as the Russian-backed regime forces step up attacks on rebel-held areas in the eastern countryside, activists said.

Saturday's strikes targeted an array of villages west of Idlib city, killing a family of three in the town of Shnan.

The Russian-backed regime forces have killed at least 86 civilians, including 32 children, in ten days in northern Syria, Syria's Response Coordinators group said.

The airstrikes and shelling came amid a regime offensive on the last rebel stronghold in the country, and rebel-held parts of nearby Aleppo province.

Local activists have recorded about 300 Russian and Syrian airstrikes on the area in the past 30 hours, part of a stepped up assault since December.

Most of Idlib province and parts of Aleppo province are still controlled by factions opposed to the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Regime forces on Friday took two villages from rebels east of Marret al-Numan town, following a massive aerial bombing.

Regime-run media said rebels had launched a major attack on regime forces in Idlib on Thursday that Russia's defence ministry said killed up to 40 Syrian soldiers.

Russia's defence ministry said that militants had seized two settlements in one of the offensives, which began on Wednesday, forcing regime troops to abandon some of their positions in the southeast of the so-called Idlib de-escalation zone under rocket fire.

The Turkish-backed National Liberation Front, coalition of rebel groups, had disputed the Syrian media and Russian government accounts and said no such assault had taken place on Wednesday or Thursday.

Idlib province alone is home to at least three million people, many of whom are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.

According to the UN humanitarian coordination agency OCHA, almost 350,000 people have fled their homes since December 1, mainly heading northwards from southern Idlib, which has borne the brunt of the air strikes, according to AFP.

The International Rescue Committee has warned that an additional 650,000 people, the majority of them children and women, could be forced from their homes if the violence continues.

Zaman Al Wasl