Airstrikes have killed more than two dozen civilians in northwestern Syria in the past two days in an escalation of a Russian-backed offensive against the last major rebel stronghold, a war monitor and local activists said on Saturday.
An airstrike in the village of Deir Sharki killed seven members of one family, most of them children, on Saturday morning, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Another seven people were killed by bombardments in other areas, it said.
On Friday, air strikes in the village of al-Haas killed 13 people.
The dead included a pregnant woman and her unborn baby, local activists and the observatory said.
They had been seeking shelter after fleeing another area.
Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman said that the government’s aim was apparently to force civilians to flee from areas that had been relatively unscathed in the military escalation that began in late April.
“They are bombing the towns and their outskirts to push people to flee,” he said, adding that hundreds of families were moving north away from the targeted areas.
The bombardment had widened into populated areas where there were no military positions, said Ahmad al-Dbis, safety and security manager for the US-based Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations (UOSSM), which supports medical facilities in the northwest.
“They are being targeted to drive the people towards forced displacement,” he told reporters.
The number of civilians killed by government or Russian forces stood at more than 730 since late April, Dbis said.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has said more than 500 civilians have died in hostilities.
Russia and Syria have said their forces are not targeting civilians and are instead aimed at militants including al-Nusra Front, a group known today as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
France on Friday called for an immediate end to the fighting.
The French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs added that it condemned in particular airstrikes on camps for the displaced.
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