The dead include at least eight children, White Helmets Syria Civil Defence says.

This picture taken on March 14, 2019, shows destructions following an air strike in the city of Idlib, northwestern Syria. (AFP)

Syrian regime shelling and Russian air strikes killed at least 15 civilians on Wednesday in Idlib province, in the first such raids since a September truce deal, a monitor said.

At least eight of the casualties were children, White Helmet Syria Civil Defence added.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said around 60 people were also wounded in the air strikes that struck several areas in the northwestern province.

A harrowing search and rescue operation carried out by the #WhiteHelmets in #Idlib City rescued a woman alive. The city was attacked with four air raids resulting in 15 people killed, including 8 children and two women, and 49 people were injured. #Syria pic.twitter.com/dV0jgKcHY5 — The White Helmets (@SyriaCivilDef) March 14, 2019

"Over the past 24 hours Russian aircraft have carried out dozens of raids targeting several regions in Idlib province, including the city of Idlib and the town of Saraqeb," SOHR head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

"These are the first Russian air strikes against the province" since an accord struck by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in September last year.

TRT World's Yasin Eken reports.

In September 2018, Turkey and Russia agreed to turn Idlib into a demilitarised zone after a meeting between Erdogan and Putin, in Sochi, Russia.

Ankara and Moscow signed a memorandum of understanding calling for the stabilisation of the situation in Idlib's de-escalation zone, in which acts of aggression are prohibited.

Idlib has been in the hands of rebels for years, even as Assad's regime has taken back other rebel enclaves.

The province is now home to some three million people, many of them displaced from other areas held by rebels or the opposition.

Source: AFP </s> Russian air strikes killed at least 13 civilians, including six children, Wednesday in Idlib province, in the first such raids since a September truce deal, a monitor said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said around 60 people were also wounded in the air strikes that struck several areas in the northwestern province, which is Syria’s last major rebel bastion.

“Over the past 24 hours Russian aircraft have carried out dozens of raids targeting several regions in Idlib province, including the city of Idlib and the town of Saraqeb,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

“These are the first Russian air strikes against the province” since an accord struck by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in September last year.

The truce deal was meant to stave off a planned offensive by the regime and its Russian backers that aid groups feared could spark the eight-year-old Syrian conflict’s worst humanitarian crisis to date.

Under the deal, opposition backer Turkey would exert its influence over anti-regime groups in the Idlib region to have them pull back fighters and heavy weapons from a demilitarized zone.

The government assault on the last major bastion of rebel forces has been held off but the deal’s provisions have not been implemented. According to Abdel Rahman, a prison in a suburb of Idlib city was hit on Tuesday in the Russian strikes, sparking a jailbreak by dozens of inmates. </s> BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian activists say Russian and Syrian aircraft have stepped up their assaults on the rebel-held province of Idlib, a day after air raids killed more than 60 people.

The activist-run Local Coordination Committees is reporting airstrikes on the towns of Binnish, Maarat Nasaan, and Saraqib, as well as the provincial capital, Idlib.

The network says the Monday morning airstrikes killed three children. It blamed the attacks on Russian aircraft.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported strikes on Idlib city. It says 288 civilians have been killed in the province since Oct. 20, when Syrian government and Russian aircraft intensified airstrikes.

The Syrian Civil Defense first responder group said 65 civilians were killed in Sunday airstrikes across the province, including attacks on two rural marketplaces that killed dozens. </s> War monitor says Syrian and Russian jets struck four facilities, including maternity hospital, in retaliatory assault.

At least four hospitals have been targeted by air strikes in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib, killing three people and wounding several, according to a war monitor and rescue teams.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), said Syrian government and Russian warplanes conducted the air attack on Tuesday in the countryside of Hama and Idlib.

The attacks came after opposition factions led by a former al-Qaeda affiliate launched an assault on a number of government-held villages along the border between Idlib and Hama.

The raids hit a maternity hospital in the village of al-Tah and a medical outpost in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, as well as near two other hospitals in Idlib province, Abdel Rahman told AFP.

"The raids on the maternity hospital in al-Tah killed an elderly woman who was an employee of the hospital, in the first civilian death in air strikes in Idlib province since May," he said.

According to the medical charity UOSSM, which has provided equipment to the maternity hospital, the woman killed was a cleaner in the facility and other medical staff were wounded.

In a statement distributed to journalists, the charity said two sets of strikes hit the maternity hospital, setting fuel-storage tanks on fire and leaving its incubator room "totally destroyed".

The Syrian government-affiliated Central Military Media outlet acknowledged the opposition offensive just south of Idlib and said forces responded with intensive airstrikes and shelling, killing a number of fighters.

UOSSM condemned the strikes and said that "systematic attacks on hospitals are back despite de-escalation deals".

Idlib is mainly controlled by Hayet Tahrir al-Sham, an alliance of anti-government groups formed in January and linked to al-Qaeda.

It is led by Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as al-Nusra Front.

READ MORE: Seven White Helmets medics killed in Syria's Idlib

The SOHR said the air strikes were in retaliation for the killing of 19 soldiers when Hayet Tahrir al-Sham launched an attack on government forces in the northern Hama countryside.

The fighting comes just days after Iran, Russia and Turkey announced they would jointly police the de-escalation zone in Idlib and parts of adjacent Hama and Latakia provinces.

Russia has already deployed military police to the other three de-escalation zones - Eastern Ghouta near Damascus, parts of the south and some areas of the central province of Homs.

The agreement excludes the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group and Hayet Tahrir al-Sham. </s> BEIRUT - Air strikes and government artillery killed at least 20 people, including 10 children, in the largely rebel-held Syrian province of Idlib on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Observatory, a Britain-based war monitor, said Russian or Syrian government warplanes pounded the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, killing seven children and two pregnant women.

Warplanes and government artillery also killed 11 people in the village of Baarbo in the southwest of the province, the monitor reported.

"The Russian Defence Ministry has denied information reported in multiple foreign media outlets about alleged strikes by the Russian Air Force in the region of Khan Sheikhoun near the city of Idlib," Russia's TASS news agency quoted a ministry spokesman as saying on Tuesday.

"Russian jets did not fly in the area on Nov. 8 and no missile strikes were carried out."

Syria's war pits President Bashar al-Assad, supported by Russian air power and Iranian-backed militias, against an array of mostly Sunni rebel groups, including some backed by Turkey, Gulf monarchies and the United States.

Idlib contains the largest populated area of Syria controlled by rebels - including nationalist groups under the banner of the Free Syrian Army and Islamist fighters including the former al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. (Reporting by Ellen Francis in Beirut and Jack Stubbs in Moscow; editing by Andrew Roche) </s> An air raid on the village of Kafr Batikh in Syria's northwestern opposition-held Idlib province killed 20 people on Wednesday including 16 children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday.

Some 15 of those killed in the strike, in the eastern part of Idlib province, were from one family said the Britain-based war monitor.

The head of the Idlib branch of the rescue team White Helmets, Mustapha al-Haj-Youssef, told dpa that "children were at the school when the first strike took place, they got scared and ran to hide in a nearby cave.

"The second strike hit the cave directly, killing all the children inside, as well as a man and a woman," he added.

Al-Haj-Youssef said the second strike was "probably by a Russian plane."

The Observatory could not identify the identity of the raiding plane. </s> The Russian Defence Ministry on Tuesday denied allegations that its air strikes had killed civilians in Syria’s Idlib province, saying that in recent days it had only bombed Islamist militant fighters in the area.

Moscow said it was responding to assertions from the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which on Monday said six civilians had been killed in the province, including a woman and a child.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu criticised Moscow on Monday for the same reason, saying that recent Russian bombing in Idlib had killed civilians and moderate rebels and that this would be discussed with Russian President Vladimir Putin when he visited Turkey this week.

Putin is expected to meet his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Thursday for talks on Syria.

Major-General Igor Konashenkov of the Russian Defence Ministry said in a statement that the Russian and Syrian air forces did not bomb residential areas and accused the observatory of making up allegations and of sympathising with radical Islamist militants.

“In the last few days, after drone reconnaissance and confirmation via other channels, Russian planes struck 10 terrorist targets in Idlib Province,” Konashenkov said.

“These were militant bases, ammunition stores, armoured vehicles, rocket systems, and workshops fitting out ‘jihad jeeps’ which were located a long way from residential areas,” he said.

Konashenkov said Russia had data to confirm the accuracy of its attacks and the ministry on Tuesday published video of the strikes on Idlib to back its assertions that it had only bombed militant targets.

The targets struck had taken part in a militant offensive on Sept 18 which had surrounded 29 Russian military policemen who then had to be broken out in an operation backed by air power, he added. </s> There are concerns that the number of deaths could rise as the condition of some wounded civilians were critical

File photo shows civil defence members extinguishing a fire broke out after Russian air strikes hit Idlib's Ma’arrat al-Numan district, Syria on February 7, 2018. (AA)

At least seven civilians were killed in airstrikes carried out by Russian aircraft in Syria's northwestern Idlib province, local civil defense officials said Wednesday.

"During the airstrike attacks of the war planes in Ma'arrat Hurma village seven civilians were killed and 10 civilians injured, mostly women and children. In the Hass village the children and Nisa hospital was attacked," Mustafa Hajj Youssef, director of the White Helmets civil-defence agency said.

Youssef said that after search and rescue operations ended, the airstrikes started again.

There are concerns that the number of deaths could rise as the condition of some wounded civilians were critical, Youssef added.

Additionally an air observatory officer, Hilal Muhammad said that the war planes took off from Russia's Khmeimim Airbase in western Syria and conducted their first attack in southern Idlib's Urum al-Joz village after attacking Ma'arrat Hurma village.

Notably, Idlib falls within a network of de-escalation zones, endorsed by Turkey, Russia and Iran, in which acts of aggression are expressly prohibited.

Controlled largely by anti-regime groups, Idlib has remained the target of intense airstrikes for the last two months. In January alone, 211 civilians were killed in the province while another 1,447 were injured.

During the airstrike attacks in Idlib's de-escalation zone at least six hospitals and health centres were also targeted.

Syria has only just begun to emerge from a devastating conflict that began in 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on demonstrators with unexpected ferocity.

Source: AA </s> BEIRUT: Air strikes pounded Syria's rebel-held Idlib province on Wednesday, killing at least nine people, including children, a war monitoring group said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said planes, believed to be Russian, struck the northwestern city of Idlib and the town of Maarat Misrin in the countryside.
The SOHR reports that Syrian government shelling and Russian air strikes occur in several areas in Idlib province, in the first such raids since a September truce deal, killing at least 15 civilians including eight children and wounding around 60.