By Esref Musa and Burak Karacaoglu
IDLIB, Syria (AA) – At least four civilians were killed in an airstrike in Syria’s northwestern Idlib on Saturday, according to the White Helmets civil-defense agency.
Mustafa Haj Yousuf, head of the White Helmets, told Anadolu Agency that a warplane targeted the civil-defense team which was conducting search and rescue efforts in Idlib's Jisr al-Shughur district where was hit by an earlier attack.
Four people, including a civil-defense volunteer, were killed, while two other civil-defense volunteers were heavily injured, Haj Yousuf said.
The SU 34 Russian warplane took off from Khmeimim air base, according to a statement of the opposition’s plane observatory.
- Regime forces continue attacks
The Bashar al-Assad regime and its Iranian-backed terror groups continued heavy bombardment in residential areas of Idlib since early Saturday.
The warplanes of the al-Assad regime also started airstrikes in the evening hours.
Regime attacks in Idlib’s de-escalation zone are estimated to have killed at least 116 civilians — and injured more than 342 others — since the beginning of 2019.
In September 2018, Turkey and Russia agreed to turn Idlib into a demilitarized zone after a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his counterpart Vladimir Putin in Russia's coastal city of Sochi.
Ankara and Moscow signed a memorandum of understanding calling for the stabilization of the situation in Idlib's de-escalation zone, in which acts of aggression are prohibited.
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.
Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and more than 10 million others displaced, according to UN officials.
- Written by Sena Guler
