At least nine killed in shelling of displacement camps in Syria

Amman — Syrian forces backed by Russian warplanes bombed  camps of displaced families near Syria’s northwestern city of Idlib on Sunday, killing at least nine civilians in a flare-up of attacks on the last opposition-help bastion, a monitor and rescuers said.

Fighter jets flying at high altitude, aided by Syrian army artillery, also dropped bombs on forests near the makeshift camps west of Idlib, witnesses said.

No immediate comment was available from Russia or its allies in the Syrian army, which says it targets the hideouts of insurgent groups and denies attacking civilians.

The opposition civil defence service and Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three children and a woman were among those killed in the strikes on the crowded camps where more than 70 people were wounded and rushed to field hospitals.

"There are no military bases or warehouses or rebel barracks here. Only civilians," said Seraj Ibrahim, a rescuer with the so-called Western-backed White Helmets, when reached by phone.

More than 4-million people live in the densely populated opposition-held northwest along the Turkish border. Most of them were driven there by successive Russian-led campaigns that regained territory seized by rebels.

Russian jets last month hit areas under the control of the jihadist Hyat Tahrir al Sham group after a bout of fighting among rival rebel forces in the northwest in renewed strikes that shattered a relative lull in raids since earlier this year.

The region has been hit by sporadic shelling from Syrian army outposts against frontlines. Rebels have shelled areas under their control.

A deal brokered nearly three years ago between Russia, which backs Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s forces, and Turkey, which supports opposition groups, ended fighting that had displaced more than a million people within a few months.

Reuters