Russia jets hit Syria's rebel-held Idlib, leaving at least nine dead: rescuers

Russian jets bombed camps near Syria's northwestern city of Idlib on Sunday, killing at least nine civilians in a flare-up of attacks on the last opposition-help bastion, witnesses and rescuers said.

War planes flying at high altitude, aided by Syrian regime army artillery, also dropped bombs on forests near the makeshift camps west of Idlib, witnesses said.

No immediate comment was available from Russia or its allies in the Syrian regime army, which maintains it targets the hideouts of insurgent groups and denies attacking civilians.

The opposition civil defence service said three children and a woman were among those killed in the strikes on the crowded camps where more than 70 people were wounded and rushed to field hospitals.

"There are no military bases or warehouses or rebel barracks here. Only civilians," said Seraj Ibrahim, a rescuer with the White Helmets, when reached by phone.

More than four million people live in the densely populated opposition-held northwest along the Turkish border.

Most of them were driven there by successive Russian-led campaigns that regained territory seized by rebels.

Russian jets last month hit areas under the control of the jihadist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group after a bout of fighting among rival rebel forces in the northwest in renewed strikes that shattered a relative lull in raids since earlier this year.

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The region has been hit by sporadic shelling from Syrian regime army outposts against frontlines. Rebels have shelled areas under their control.

A deal brokered nearly three years ago between Russia, which backs Syrian regime President Bashar Al-Assad's forces, and Turkey, which supports opposition groups, ended fighting that had displaced more than a million people within a few months.

(Reuters)