Comment BEIRUT — At least 10 people were killed in Syria overnight and this morning, following Israeli strikes on the capital in the south and Russian strikes in the country’s northwest. Syrian state news agency SANA reported Israeli strikes from the disputed Golan Heights shortly after midnight on Friday, killing three soldiers, wounding seven others and causing property damage. Jordanian state television later reported that the number of Syrian soldiers had risen to five. Israeli airstrikes in Syria have targeted chemical weapons facilities, officials say Syria regularly reports airstrikes from its southern neighbor Israel, its longtime sworn enemy. The strikes, rarely acknowledged by Israel, typically target military installations, weapons depots and other locations under the control of Iran-aligned groups. Last month, airstrikes the government attributed to Israel hit Syria’s main airport in the capital, Damascus, severely damaging runways and at least one hall in the airport’s terminal. The full extent of damage and losses caused by such strikes cannot be verified. On the other side of the country in the northwestern countryside of Idlib, Russian airstrikes killed seven civilians, according to the local first responder group, the White Helmets. One strike leveled a modest building in an olive grove that used to be a chicken farm, the White Helmets media office told the Washington Post, killing four children from one family. Another strike killed two men who had approached the scene after the initial attack. Photos released by the group show a collapsed building with rubble and colorful blankets and pillows spilling out. One showed the corpse of a young woman, half of her body sticking out from under the rubble, her wrist adorned with gold bracelets. Another was of her bloody uncle, sitting barefoot and cross-legged, watching the members of the civil defense do their job. The children’s father and mother are in hospital, the White Helmets said, acknowledging that the family was displaced from a village in Aleppo’s northeastern countryside. Another attack hit civilian homes nearby, killing a man riding a motorcycle, the group said. Russia is a staunch supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose violent crackdown on popular protests that erupted in 2011 made him largely a global pariah. Russia’s military intervention in 2015 was a lifeline for Assad, who at the time had lost large swaths of Syria to various rebel and extremist groups. Russia and Syria carried out dozens of illegal ‘double whammy’ attacks, report says Assad has since won back much of the ground he had lost, and as his troops, backed by Iran-aligned groups and the Russian air force, have won back ground, his government has loaded green buses with former rebels, their families and their supporters and sent them to the northwest of the country. The enclave, which stretches across Idlib province and surrounding areas, is home to around 4.5 million people, many of whom have been displaced multiple times by the war. The region is controlled by opposition militant groups and the deterioration of overall living conditions has left 4.1 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. The war in Ukraine may threaten the lives of displaced Syrians Airstrikes have become a tragic norm for Syrians living in the area: Young children who grew up in the decade-long war are able to recognize the planes and the level of impact their strike will have. However, Idlib had enjoyed a period of relative calm in recent months, following a February raid by US commandos on the home of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the leader of the Islamic State militant group. The latest Russian strike was 10 days earlier, hitting military targets that had exchanged artillery and missile fire with Syrian government troops. According to findings by a Syria-focused rights group this week, the Russian and Syrian governments have carried out dozens of “dual pressure” airstrikes on civilians and aid workers in Syria since 2013 – a pattern of unlawful attacks in which the Russia and Syria bomb or strike a site where paramedics, such as the White Helmets, and civilians gather to help victims of an initial attack.
