KAFR JALES: Syrian regime rocket fire killed nine people, including three children, at makeshift camps for displaced people in the country’s last major rebel-held bastion early on Sunday, a war monitor said.

The dead included three children among seven civilians, and two unidentified individuals, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

An earlier Observatory toll reported six civilians dead, including two youngsters.

It said another 75 people were wounded when more than 30 rockets exploded in several areas in the city of Idlib in Syria’s northwest.

An AFP correspondent saw flimsy tents destroyed and burned, blood stains and rocket debris at the scene.

Abu Hamid, a camp resident, said: “We awoke this morning and were getting ready for work when we began hearing the sounds of strikes. The children were afraid and began screaming.”

The last pocket of armed opposition to Pres­ident Bas­har al-Assad’s regime inclu­des large swathes of Idlib province and parts of the neighbouring Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces.

The Idlib region is home to about three million people, around half of them displaced.

They are among the millions displaced internally and abroad by the war in Syria since 2011. Nearly half a million people have been killed.

Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2022