Russian warplanes suspected of killing nearly 50 civilians in Idlib marketplace bombing

At least 26 people, including three children, were killed in the town of Kafr Nabl, and another 18 people were killed in the town of Maarat al-Numan.

A witness told AFP news agency “six strikes hit houses and a crowded local market” in the village of Kafr Nabl.

In Maarat al-Numan, an AFP photographer saw local residents and White Helmets rescue workers trying to reach survivors in the rubble at a vegetable market hit in the strike.

The monitor also reported two additional deaths, one in an earlier strike on Maarat al-Numan and another in al-Naqir, also in Idlib.

And it said six civilians, four of them children, had been killed in a government barrel bomb attack on the town of al-Tamanah in the south of Idlib.

Russia began a military intervention in support of President Bashar al-Assad in September last year, saying it was carrying out strikes against “terrorists”.

In November, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russian forces had begun a “major operation” targeting Idlib and Homs provinces.

The northern Idlib province is mostly controlled by a powerful rebel alliance known as the Army of Conquest.

Most of Homs province is controlled by the Syrian government, but small parts of the countryside are controlled by a range of rebel groups.

More than 300,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests before spiralling into a bloody civil war.

Meanwhile, government forces advanced against rebels in east Aleppo, taking two small neighbourhoods and pushing into a third, state media said.

The army and allied forces are nearly three weeks into an operation to recapture all of Syria’s second city, divided between regime and rebel forces since 2012.