Strikes on Northwest Syria Kill 1 Person, Cause Wide Damage
Airstrikes on several locations in northwest Syria near the border with Turkey have killed at least one person and set afire several trucks used to distribute aid, opposition activists and a paramedic group said Monday.
The late Sunday attacks angered
Turkey, which had asked Russia to secure an immediate end to the strikes,
Turkey’s Defense Ministry said, adding that Turkish troops had been placed on
alert.
Turkey and Russia support rival
parties in Syria’s 10-year conflict. The countries reached a deal last March
that stopped a Russian-backed government offensive on the northwestern Idlib
province, the last major opposition stronghold in war-torn Syria.
Opposition activists claimed that
Russian warplanes carried out the attacks near the Bab al-Hawa border crossing
with Turkey late Sunday, hours after regime artillery shelling hit a major
hospital in a opposition-controlled town in northwestern Syria.
Six patients, including a child,
were killed. Medical staff were wounded, forcing the facility to shut its
doors, The Associated Press reported.
The Bab al-Hawa border crossing is
a main point from which aid is brought to opposition-held parts of northwest
Syria.
Idlib-based journalist Salwa
Abdul-Rahman said one of the strikes hit an area near the town of Sarmada,
setting afire trucks used by aid workers to distribute assistance.
“The targeted locations were civilian with no
military presence,” she said.
One person was killed in the
strikes, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an
opposition war monitor, and the opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense, also known
as White Helmets.
The civil defense said that in
addition to the trucks, the strikes targeted a cement factory. The truck fires
were put under control hours later.
An AP video from the area showed
about a dozen trucks on fire as civil defense members sprayed them with water.
Turkey’s Defense Ministry blamed Syrian regime forces for the attack, saying it left several people wounded.
