A barrage of Russian airstrikes on rebel-held areas of southern Syria killed 22 civilians on Thursday, a monitoring group stated, most of them in a single battered city.
“At least 35 Russian airstrikes hit the town of Al-Mseifra,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stated.
“One of them hit a basement where people were taking shelter, killing 17 civilians, including five children,” the Britain-based monitor stated.
The Observatory says it determines who carried out explicit strikes based mostly on the kind of plane and munitions used, the places and the flight patterns.
The hospital in Al-Mseifra had been put out of service by Russian strikes on Tuesday evening, the Observatory stated.
Another 5 civilians had been killed in different rebel-controlled areas of Daraa, the primary province in southern Syria.
“This is the highest toll since the escalation began on June 19,” stated Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.
Government forces have been ramping up their bombardment of rebel-held areas of the south since June 19, and allied Russian warplanes carried out their first raids on the area in a 12 months on June 23.
In July final 12 months, Russia, the United States and Jordan had agreed on a de-escalation zone for rebel-controlled components of the south.
After that, Russian warplanes — lively in Syria since 2015 — had kept away from bombing insurgent positions in the area.