Syria regime rocket strike kills six displaced people: monitor

Syrian regime rocket fire killed six civilians, including two children, at makeshift camps for displaced people in the country's last major rebel-held bastion early on Sunday, a war monitor said.

The victims had all been uprooted from their homes during Syria's years of war, said the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a broad network of sources on the ground.

It said more than 30 rockets exploded in several areas, including the camps, west of the city of Idlib in Syria's northwest.

The Observatory said the number of people wounded in the shelling increased from 20 to 75, and they were in various conditions.

It said shelling had continued at several locations in the area after rebels struck regime targets in retaliation for the strikes.

An AFP correspondent saw flimsy tents destroyed and burned, blood stains and rocket debris at the scene.

At a nearby hospital, the correspondent saw the bodies of two young girls.

Abu Hamid, a camp resident, told AFP: "We awoke this morning and were getting ready for work when we began hearing the sounds of strikes."

"The children were afraid and began screaming," continued the 67-year-old.

"We didn't know where to go. It wasn't one rocket or two, but a dozen. The shrapnel was flying from every direction. We didn't know how to protect ourselves."

The last pocket of armed opposition to President Bashar Al-Assad's regime includes large swathes of Idlib province and parts of the neighbouring Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces.

The extremist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), headed by ex-members of Syria's former Al-Qaeda franchise, is the dominant group in the area but other rebel groups are also active.

According to the Observatory, the rocket fire came the day after five Syrian regime forces members died in shelling by a group affiliated with HTS.

"For some time, HTS has been trying to expand its [sphere] to Afrin [from Idlib] because of the crossings between both areas that are very important, financially speaking"https://t.co/S5yjmhttbK

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

They are among the millions displaced internally and abroad by the war in Syria since 2011.

Nearly half a million people have been killed.

With Russian and Iranian support, Assad clawed back much of the ground lost in the early stages of the country's conflict, which erupted in 2011 when the regime brutally repressed pro-democracy protests.

Despite periodic clashes, a ceasefire reached in 2020 by Moscow and Turkey – which supports anti-Assad rebels – has largely held in the northwest.