Syrian regime strike on funeral near Idlib city kills 3, injures 4

Three people, including a child, were killed on Wednesday and four others injured as Syrian regime strikes targeted a cemetery in the village of Afas east of Idlib city while a funeral was being held.

Assad regime forces have recently increased their attacks in rebel-held northwestern Syria in violation of a March 2020 ceasefire agreement, killing and injuring dozens of people and targeting Turkish observation posts.

Also on Wednesday, a woman was killed and several other people injured, including her child, when regime forces targeted them with a heat-seeking missile near the rebel-held town of Atareb in Aleppo province.

Three Turkish soldiers were also injured when regime forces shelled an observation post in the Jabal al-Zawiya area of southern Idlib province.

Bilal Bayyush, a Syrian media activist, told The New Arab’s Arabic-language service that Syrian rebels and Turkish troops clashed with regime forces on the M4 highway near the town of Saraqeb east of Idlib.

He said that the regime's recent attacks in western Aleppo and eastern Idlib provinces had caused dozens of families to flee the area and seek refuge near the Turkish border, after they had returned to their homes following the March 2020 ceasefire.

Elsewhere in Syria, an Iraqi refugee was killed in the Al-Hol refugee camp in the country's northeast, which hosts 62,000 people displaced by fighting between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Islamic State extremist group, as well as the families of IS militants. It marked the third such killing this month.

More than 500,000 people have been killed and millions more displaced since the Syrian conflict began in 2011 with the brutal suppression of pro-democracy protests by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.