Syrian government forces shelled a tent settlement housing families displaced by the country's conflict in the rebel-held northwest early Sunday, killing at least six people and wounding more than a dozen, opposition war monitors said. The shelling is the latest violation of a truce reached between Russia and Turkey in March 2020 that ended a Russian-backed government offensive on Idlib province, the last major rebel-held stronghold in Syria.
The truce has been repeatedly violated over the past two years killing and wounding scores of people. The tent settlement, known as the Maram camp, is just northwest of the provincial capital of Idlib. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, reported that government forces fired about 30 rockets toward rebel-held areas, including the Maram camp Sunday morning killing six and wounding 15. It said the dead included two children and one woman.
Other opposition activists reported that six people were killed and more than 30 wounded. The pro-government Sham FM radio station said Syrian government forces shelled positions of the al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, the most powerful militant group in Idlib. It said Syrian and Russian warplanes also attacked the areas. Syria's conflict broke out in March 2011 and has since killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced half the country's pre-war population of 23 million and left large parts of Syria destroyed.
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