Aleppo: Child killed, four women wounded in regime artillery

A 6-year-old child was killed and four women wounded on Sunday in renewed artillery attacks by Russia-led militias on rebel-held areas in northern Aleppo province, local reporter said Sunday.

Zaman al-Wasl reporter in Aleppo said the Syrian regime militias had targeted Darat Azza town in the western countryside of Aleppo with Russian-made Krasnopol shells.

The regime forces used the Russian laser-guided Krasnopol artillery shells in their attacks, which were usually used to destroy fortified field installations.

Late on Saturday, the regime artillery fire killed seven civilians, 3 children and 4 women, in the country's last major rebel bastion of Idlib.

The shelling took place in the village of Ehsim late Saturday, in the south of Idlib region, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and local activists said.

A family member told AFP that visitors had gathered to congratulate a male relative on getting married when the shelling hit their home.

Earlier in the day, rockets fired by pro-regime forces killed six people in the village of Sarja, including three children and a rescue worker, meaning at least 11 were killed in total in Idlib on Saturday.

The deaths are the latest violations of a ceasefire deal agreed by Turkey and Russia in March 2020 to stem a regime offensive on the jihadist-dominated stronghold.

An AFP photographer in Ehsim saw rescue workers under floodlights cut through a collapsed ceiling to retrieve the body of a woman.

Bundling her body up in a blanket, they then gently lowered it down a ladder and carried it into an ambulance.

Bordering Turkey, the northwestern Idlib region is home to around three million people, more than half displaced by fighting in other parts of war-torn Syria. Many rely on humanitarian aid to survive.

The region is dominated by Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, but other rebel groups are also present.

Ten years of war in Syria have killed 500,000 people and driven half the pre-war population of 22 million from their homes, including more than 6.7 million as refugees to neighbouring countries. (Zaman al-Wasl, Agencies)