Strikes kill three civilians in northwest Syria — monitor

KAFR NURAN,  Syria — Artillery strikes by the Syrian army killed three civilians including a child on Wednesday in the last major rebel-held bastion in the country’s northwest, a war monitor said.

Shelling lasted all day at several locations in the region, an AFP correspondent there said, adding that the Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) militant group targeted government positions in retaliation.

“Three civilians including a child were killed in heavy artillery fire in the town of Kafr Nuran in Aleppo’s western countryside,” the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Two others were injured, added the observatory, which relies on a wide network of sources on the ground in Syria.

The shelling damaged a house in the town of Kafr Nuran, an AFP correspondent said.

Residents in the town told AFP that the artillery fire hit a neighbourhood where some people had gathered to buy watermelons.

Earlier Wednesday, HTS rocket fire had killed a Syrian soldier in regime-held areas of Idlib province, the observatory said.

Nearly half of Idlib province, including the provincial capital of the same name, as well as parts of the adjacent provinces of Aleppo, Hama and Latakia, make up the last of Syria’s rebel-held areas.

HTS, the former Syrian branch of Al Qaeda, is the dominant group in the area, but other rebel groups are also active.

Despite periodic clashes, a ceasefire deal brokered by regime ally Moscow, as well as Ankara — which supports rebel groups in Syria — has largely held in the northwest since March 2020.

The Idlib region is home to about 3 million people, around half of them displaced.

Syria’s war has killed more than half-a-million people and displaced millions since erupting in 2011 with a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests.