Regime airstrikes kill 11 civilians in Syria’s Idlib

By Halit Suleyman

IDLIB, Syria

Eleven civilians were killed and another 20 injured on Thursday by regime airstrikes in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, a local civil defense source said.

Speaking anonymously to Anadolu Agency due to fears for his safety, the source said that a residential part of the town of Al-Dana had been targeted by regime warplanes.

Local residents injured by the airstrikes were taken to local field hospitals, the source added.

Meanwhile, 11 civil defense officials were injured by three separate airstrikes carried out by regime warplanes in Idlib’s Saraqib city, according to the same source.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests -- which had erupted as part of that year’s "Arab Spring" uprisings -- with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to UN figures.

However, the Syrian Center for Policy Research, an NGO until recently based in Damascus, has put the total death toll from the five-year conflict at more than 470,000.