“Two civilians were killed and three others were injured as a result of artillery shelling by regime forces targeting homes in the city of Sarmin, east of Idlib city,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor.
Half of Idlib province, as well as parts of Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia provinces, are the last rebel-held bastions in the country after President Bashar al-Assad seized back swathes of territory over the course of the brutal Syrian civil war, which erupted in 2011.
Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, is the prominent force among dozens of different rebel factions operating in the rebel-held northwest. It controls large swathes of Idlib and parts of Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia provinces.
It has been internationally recognized as a terrorist organization.
A ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey has been in place in northwest Syria since March 2020, but the area has witnessed a recent flare-up in violence.
Over 13 million Syrians have been displaced since the start of the civil war, more than six million of which are refugees who have fled the war-torn country, according to a report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
