Russian airstrikes on the last major opposition stronghold in Syria killed five civilians from the same family, including three children, rescuers and a war monitor said on Tuesday.
Moscow is one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s key backers, providing him with military, political, and economic support in the country’s 12-year civil war.
“On December 25 at 10:00 p.m. (0700 GMT) Russian warplanes targeted civilian houses” on the outskirts of the town of Armanaz, in Idlib province, said Abdel Halim Shehab of the White Helmets voluntary search-and-rescue group.
Members of the White Helmets, which operates in opposition-held zones of northern Syria, pulled the victims from under the rubble of their houses, he said.
“The victims were from the same family of six: five of them were killed and a child survived,” he said, identifying the dead as the father, mother, and three of their children.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor with a network of sources across the war-torn country, also said Russia carried out the strikes.
The Britain-based organization reported the same toll of five dead and said the family’s house was located on farmland near Armanaz.
A brutal Syrian government crackdown on Arab Spring-inspired protests that erupted in 2011 spiraled into a devastating war involving foreign armies, militias, and extremists.
More than half a million people have been killed in the conflict.
Russia’s intervention in the war since 2015 has helped forces loyal to Assad claw back much of the territory they lost to the opposition early in the conflict.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an extremist group led by al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch, controls swathes of Idlib province and parts of neighboring Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia provinces.
The HTS is considered a terrorist organization by Syria, the United States, and the European Union. It regularly clashes with Syrian and allied Russian forces.
On Sunday, Syria’s defense ministry said its forces had shot down seven drones launched by “terrorist organizations” in Hama and Aleppo provinces.
Since 2020, a ceasefire deal brokered by Russia and opposition-backer Turkey has largely held in Syria’s northwest, despite periodic clashes.
