BEIRUT: Air strikes have killed more than two dozen civilians in northwestern Syria in the last 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 air strike in the village of Deir Sharki killed seven members of one family, most of them children, on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Another seven people were killed by bombardments in other areas, it said.

On Friday, air strikes in al-Haas kil­led 13 people. The dead included a pre­gnant woman and her unborn baby the Observatory said. They had been seeking shelter after fleeing another area.

The bombardment forced a wave of people to flee northwards from the targeted areas, the Observatory and local activists said.

“They are bombing the towns and their outskirts to push people to flee,” Observatory Director Rami Abdul­rah­man said, adding that hundreds of fam­­­­­ilies had been uprooted from areas that had so far largely been spared in the almost four-month offensive.

Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2019

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