30 die as ‘Russian jets hit Idlib’

AMMAN: At least 30 people died in airstrikes on the opposition-held Syrian city of Idlib on Tuesday, in some of the heaviest raids there in months, witnesses and rescue workers said. 

Around eight attacks by what witnesses believed to be Russian jets wounded scores of people and leveled several multi-story buildings in residential areas of the northwestern city, they added.

Russia’s Defense Ministry later said media reports that its planes had bombed Idlib were not true, Interfax news agency reported.

Two rescue workers said the death toll was at least 30. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 26 people were killed and casualties were expected to rise as rescue workers searched for bodies under the rubble.

Video footage by activists on social media showed civilians, including young children, being treated in the main city hospital where the injured had been rushed for treatment.

“We are



still pulling bodies from the rubble,” said Issam Al-Idlibi, a volunteer civil defense worker.

The extent of the damage and the debris bore the hallmarks of a Russian attack, two witnesses said.

Russian planes have targeted a number of towns and villages in the area since entering the Syrian conflict in September 2015 to back ally President Bashar Assad.

But activists and residents also said there had been a reduction of Russian strikes in Idlib province since a Turkish-Russian brokered a cessation of hostilities late December.

Planes from the US-led coalition have also launched a number of attacks in the rural province, a major stronghold of radicals, many of them formerly affiliated to Al-Qaeda.

Idlib’s population has been swollen by thousands of Syrian fighters and their families evacuated from villages and towns around Damascus and Aleppo city, which was retaken by the government in recent months.