On Tuesday, Assad forces killed seven civilians, including three children, in a bombardment on Idleb province in northwestern Syria. At the same time, the Idleb Education Directorate announced classes would be suspended temporarily in the eastern and southern countryside of the province, which have witnessed the heaviest strikes, with artillery and rocket bombardments.
The director of the Syrian Civil Defense in Idleb, Mustafa Hajj Youssef, told Anadolu agency that: “regime forces carried out heavy attacks (on Tuesday evening) on the towns of Khan Sheikhoun and Saraqeb and the town of al-Hanboushiyeh in Idleb, which killed seven civilians, including three children, and wounded at least six others.”
Assad’s forces used artillery, rockets and mortars to attack Khan Sheikhoun, Saraqeb and al-Hanboushiyeh, as well as the towns of al-Latamna and Kafr Zeiteh, in the northern Hama countryside, as well as three villages in the western countryside.
The Idleb Education Directorate suspended classes in a number of areas in the southern and eastern countrysides of Idleb province, particularly Khan Sheikhoun and Saraqeb and the nearby towns and villages.
Idleb province along with the northern Hama province and the western part of Aleppo province and a small part of the northern Lattakia countryside comprise the “de-escalation” zone, in accordance with the agreement settled in September 2017 between Turkey, Russia and Iran in the Kazakhstan capital.
In September 2018, Turkey and Russia established the Sochi agreement in order to establish a ceasefire in Idleb. In accordance with this, the Syrian opposition withdrew its heavy weapons from the areas included in the agreement on Oct. 10, 2018.
But the regime has continued to escalate attacks in Idleb, killing and wounding dozens of civilians after the deal. The Emergency Responders team in northern Syria said in a report last week that the Assad regime’s ongoing military campaign had killed 254 people since February, 200 of them in Idleb and 54 in northern Hama and Latakia and western Aleppo.
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
