Russian warplanes bombed camps near the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib on Sunday, killing at least nine civilians, witnesses and rescuers said, in an escalation of attacks on the last rebel stronghold.
Witnesses reported that high-flying warplanes dropped bombs on forests near makeshift camps to the west of Idlib, with the support of Syrian army artillery.
There was no immediate comment from Russia or the Syrian army, which says it targets the hideouts of armed groups and denies attacking civilians.
The opposition civil defense said that 3 children and a woman were among the dead in the raids on overcrowded camps, where more than 70 people were also injured and taken to field hospitals for treatment.
Siraj Ibrahim, a rescuer working with the Western-backed civil defense known as the "White Helmets", said by phone that there are no military bases, warehouses or barracks for the opposition in this place, only civilians.
An AFP correspondent at the scene said that in the early hours of the morning, the missiles hit a camp and gatherings for the displaced in the Kafr Jales area, west of Idlib city.
Civil defense teams and residents rushed to rescue the wounded and transferred them to nearby hospitals, where an AFP reporter saw two girls whose bodies were wrapped in blankets and laid on the ground.
Abu Hamid, 67, a resident of the camp, told AFP, "We woke up in the morning, each preparing himself for his work, and when we started hearing the sounds of (the bombing), the children got scared and started screaming after they saw the missiles."
He added, "We didn't know where to go. It wasn't one or two missiles, but 10...the shrapnel started flying from every direction, and we didn't know how to protect ourselves."
More than 4 million people live in the densely populated and opposition-controlled northwest region on the Turkish border.
Most of them were forced to move there due to successive Russian-led military campaigns to retake the lands captured by the opposition.
Last month, Russian warplanes bombed areas under the control of the Headquarters for the Liberation of Al-Sham after fighting broke out between opposition factions in the northwest of the country, in strikes that followed a pause in raids earlier this year.
The area was subjected to intermittent bombardment from Syrian regime positions along the front line, and the opposition forces, in turn, bombed areas under the control of Damascus.
Since March 6, 2020, a ceasefire has been declared in the rebel-held areas, announced by Moscow, an ally of Damascus, and Turkey, which supports the fighting factions, after a massive attack by the regime forces, during which they managed to control half of the Idlib area.
The area witnesses from time to time mutual bombardment by several parties, as well as raids by the regime forces and Russia, although the ceasefire is still largely holding.