The Bashar Assad regime carried out more attacks on settlements in Syria's northwestern Idlib province Sunday during the early hours of the morning, resulting in the death of one child.
The attacks were conducted against villages in Idlib's Kafranbil and Lazkiye districts.
Despite eight months of calm provided by the Sochi deal, the regime, backed by Moscow, intensified its attacks starting on April 26 under the pretext of fighting al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorists holed up in Idlib. Since then, the situation has gotten worse, taking more civilian lives with each passing day.
In other development, the White Helmets civil rescue group announced the casulty figures from September two days ago, which stated that 46 people lost their lives and important facilities such as one hospital, two camps, two schools, a White Helmets center, three markets and 361 houses were attacked with various weapons including war planes, cluster bombs, rocket launchers and incendiary weapons.
The heavy bombardment since late April has damaged or impacted 87 educational facilities, the Britain-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) said. A further 200 schools are being used as shelters for those displaced by the fighting, it added.
The Idlib region is home to some 3 million people, almost half of whom have been displaced from other parts of Syria in the country's eight-year war.
The violence since late April has killed more than 960 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and displaced more than 400,000 people, the U.N. says.
Idlib is the last opposition enclave in Syria. Last year, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin reached an agreement in Sochi on Sept. 17. According to the agreement, the cease-fire in the Idlib region was to be preserved with the withdrawal of heavy arms and radicals from the region. The meeting in Sochi was part of the Astana process, the of which was held in Turkey in January 2017 to bring all warring parties in the Syrian conflict to the table to facilitate U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Geneva. Ankara often warns the international community and regional countries that a new offensive could trigger a fresh refugee wave toward the West.
