Air strikes kill 15 civilians in Syria

BEIRUT: Air strikes on Tuesday killed more than a dozen civilians in parts of Syria’s south near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, a war monitor said.The Damascus regime has been pounding the southwestern province of Quneitra since Sunday in a bid to retake it from rebels, after winning back most of the neighbouring governorate of Daraa in less than a month. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said air strikes killed 14 civilians in the village of Ain al-Tina on Quneitra’s border with Daraa on Tuesday morning.“They were all displaced from other areas. They included five children and three women,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said. It was not immediately clear whether the strikes were carried out by the regime or its Russian ally, the Britain-based monitor said. The monitor determines who carried out strikes based on the type of aircraft and munitions used, locations and flight patterns.The civilians had reportedly been taking shelter in a large building in Ain al-Tina. Activists shared images of the strikes’ reported aftermath, showing motionless children with greyish skin wrapped in blood-stained blankets. In the west of the adjacent province of Daraa, Russian air raids also killed one civilian near the village of Al-Aliya, the Observatory said. “Since Tuesday morning, heavy Russian air strikes and barrel bombs dropped by the regime have been targeting an area straddling Quneitra and Daraa,” Abdel Rahman said. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group led by Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate, is present in that area, he said. HTS jihadists are not included in a ceasefire between regime and rebels in Daraa announced earlier this month, which has allowed the regime to retake control of more than 90 percent of the province.

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