Regime air strikes kill 18 civilians in Syria's Idlib: monitor

Regime airstrikes on Syria's last major opposition bastion killed 18 civilians on Saturday, a war monitor said, one day before a ceasefire is due to take effect. Six children were among the dead in the northwest province of Idlib, where a fresh ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey is expected to go into effect after midnight, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Airstrikes on the city of Idlib killed seven civilians, while sperate raids on two towns near the provincial capital killed 11 others, the Britain-based war monitor said. In Idlib city, the bombardment hit near a cultural center, according to the war monitor and an AFP correspondent who was in the area.

Scores of students, many of them crying, ran from the site of the blast in panic, the AFP correspondent said. The bombardment surprised residents in a city that has been relatively free from the near-daily attacks that have hit Idlib province's flash-point south, the correspondent added.

Less than 10 kilometers (six miles) away, regime airstrikes hit a market in the town of Binnish, killing 7, according to the Observatory. The market was mostly reduced to rubble, as thick white smoke from the strikes created a fog, according to an AFP correspondent there.

South of Idlib city, raids hit the area of Al-Nerab, killing four. Jihadist-dominated Idlib has come under mounting bombardment in recent weeks, displacing tens of thousands of people in the northwestern region home to some three million.

The Damascus government has repeatedly vowed to retake Idlib, which is run by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group dominated by Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate. A ceasefire announced in late August was supposed to stop Russia-backed regime bombardment of the region after strikes killed some 1,000 civilians in four months.

But the Observatory says sporadic bombardment and clashes continued, before intensifying in the past month. Syria's war has killed more than 380,000 people including over 115,000 civilians since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests. 

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)