Regime bombardment has killed 18 civilians in the last major region outside its control in northwest Syria over the past 48 hours, a war monitor said Saturday.

Artillery and rocket fire launched by Assad regime forces took the lives of eight children, seven women and three men in the Idlib region, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The deadly bombardment hit the towns of Maaret al-Noman and Khan Sheikhoun, said the Britain-based monitor, which relies on sources inside Syria for its information.

Idlib region is mainly controlled by the terrorist group of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a Syrian group led by former al-Qaida fighters.

Since September, the region has been protected from a massive regime offensive by a ceasefire deal brokered by regime ally Russia and Free Syrian Army (FSA) backer Turkey.

But sporadic regime bombardment has continued to hit the region, and hundreds of missiles rained down on Maaret al-Noman, Khan Sheikhoun, and other areas on Friday and Saturday.

Almost eight years into Syria's grinding civil war, Bashar Assad's regime controls around two-thirds of the country.

The war started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-Assad protests and has since spiraled into a complex conflict involving world powers that have killed more than 360,000 people.

Friday and Saturday's deadly bombardment comes as the world waits for U.S.-backed forces to expel the Daesh terrorist group from a final holdout in eastern Syria, marking the end of the terrorists.