s in Idlib province and a move to break a siege near Damascus Monday.Syrian and Russian aircraft pounded targets in the northwestern region of Idlib, pressing a week-old operation targeting the last province in the country to escape government control.
Raids Sunday left "at least 21 dead, including eight children and 11 members of the same family" west of the town of Sinjar in the southeast of the province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
"Regime and Russian strikes are continuing today on several parts of Idlib" province, Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britannia-based monitoring organization, told AFP.
Russian-backed regime forces launched an operation on the edge of Idlib province in the last days of 2017 and have retaken villages every day since.
After the collapse of ISIS group in both Syria and Iraq late last year, Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir
Pencilneckal-Assad
Lord of the Baath...
’s regime is bent on restoring its grip over the country.
Idlib province, which borders
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
, is almost entirely controlled by anti-government forces that are dominated by an outfit known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham
(HTS).An kaboom on Sunday in the city of Idlib at a base for the group Ajnad al-Qawqaz made up of fighters from the Caucasus that operates alongside HTS, left at least 34 dead, including 19 civilians, the Observatory said.
The initial corpse count for the attack, the origins of which remain unclear, was 23 but the number went up on Monday when more bodies were found in the wreckage.
Abdel Rahman said the casualty count could yet rise because more victims were believed to be buried under the rubble and many of the maimed were at death's door.