Two children were killed, five others were injured in northwest Syria due to violence that occurred in the first few days of the new year, according to a statement by UNICEF on Tuesday.

"Last year, more than 70% of grave violations against children in Syria were recorded in the northwest," the international organization said in a statement.

"Children and services catering to them must never come under attack," it said. "It has been 11 brutal years of war on the children of Syria. How much longer can this go on?"

The agency said earlier this week that a UNICEF-supported water station came under attack in the Arshani village outside Idlib in northwestern Syria.

"The attack put the station out of service cutting water supply for over 241,000 people, many of whom are internally displaced," it added.

The attack was carried out by Russian forces.

Two children and a woman were killed in the attacks while 10 others were injured, most of them children, the White Helmets civil defense group wrote on Twitter on Saturday.

Idlib continues to suffer at the hands of the Bashar Assad regime and its backer Russia. Both are determined to recapture the last opposition stronghold and normalize political relations with regional countries, particularly within the scope of steps already taken with several Arab countries.

The Idlib region is home to nearly 3 million people, two-thirds of them displaced from other parts of the country.

Nearly 75% of the total population in the opposition-held Idlib region depends on humanitarian aid to meet their basic needs, as 1.6 million people continue to live in camps or informal settlements, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.