Daily Times

Russian air strikes Sunday on Syria’s northwest killed at least 11 people including five civilians, in retaliation for deadly drone attacks blamed on rebel forces, a war monitor said. “Six civilians were killed in Jisr al-Shughur and three rebel fighters were killed nearby by Russian air strikes,” Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP. Ahmed Yezidi of the civil defence in Jisr al-Shughur, a city in rebel-held Idlib province, said the strikes killed nine people, without specifying whether fighters were included in the toll.

A fruit and vegetable market in the city was hit by the Russian strike, said the Observatory and an AFP correspondent at the scene. Yezidi called it “a direct attack on the popular market, which is a basic source of income for farmers” in the area.

One civilian and one rebel fighter were also killed in a strike on the outskirts of Idlib city, said Abdel Rahman, whose Britain-based monitor has a wide network of sources inside war-torn Syria. At least 30 civilians were wounded in Sunday’s strikes, he said, adding that the death toll was likely to rise.