At least 9 dead after Russian jets hit Syria’s rebel-held Idlib

Russian jets bombed camps near Syria’s northwestern city of Idlib on Sunday, killing at least nine civilians in a flare-up of attacks on the last opposition-held bastion, witnesses and rescuers said.
War planes flying at high altitude, aided by Syrian army artillery, also dropped bombs on forests near the makeshift camps west of Idlib, witnesses said.
No immediate comment was available from Russia or its allies in the Syrian army, which says it targets the hideouts of insurgent groups and denies attacking civilians.
The opposition civil defence service said three children and a woman were among those killed in the strikes on the crowded camps where more than 70 people were wounded and rushed to field hospitals.
“There are no military bases or warehouses or rebel barracks here. Only civilians,” Seraj Ibrahim, a rescuer with the Western-backed White Helmets organization, said when reached by phone.
More than 4 million people live in the densely populated opposition-held northwest area along the Turkish border. Most of them were driven there by successive Russian-led campaigns that regained territory seized by rebels.