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Al Munţār (Syria) (AFP) – The last Syrian rebel stronghold, Idlib, was targeted on Saturday by the "most violent" airstrikes in Russia, according to one official, after the failure of a three-way summit on the Syrian conflict.
The new strikes took place one day after Turkey's leaders and rebel regime allies, Russia and Iran, failed at the Tehran summit to agree on a threatened offensive against the province of Tehran. Idlib.
Humanitarian organizations have warned that any military campaign aimed at taking over the region of nearly three million people on the Turkish border could trigger one of the worst humanitarian disasters of the seven-year war in Syria.
On Saturday, dozens of Russian air raids struck the southern and southeastern regions of Idlib province, the monitoring group of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announced.
At least four civilians, including two children, were killed in the strikes and dozens of barrel bombs were dropped by planes of the regime, said the British official.
An AFP correspondent in the village of Al-Muntar, in the south of the country, saw huge clouds of gray smoke rise above the olive trees after a bombardment of barrels.
Women and children ran terrified in the nearby fields, a woman seeming to grab a baby in a blanket.
An old man was out of breath, barefooted and stunned by the red earth, his cane at his side.
Raids drove hundreds of families onto the road, with dozens of cars and trucks trying to transport civilians away from the bombings.
The head of the observatory, Rami Abdel Rahman, said the raids targeted the positions of jihadists and rebels, some of which were empty and others used.
– Civilians flee –
This is the biggest bombing since August 10, when at least 53 civilians were killed in Idlib and the neighboring province of Aleppo, he added.
Idlib is largely controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an alliance led by the former Syrian subsidiary of Al Qaeda, as well as by rival rebels.
The United Nations warned that any offensive could force up to 800,000 people to flee their homes and urged the main government to avoid a "bloodbath".
On Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan disagreed with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during a press conference in the Iranian capital.
Erdogan called for a "truce", while the Russian president said that Damascus "has a right and must eventually take control of all its national territory".
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned against a "scorched earth" policy, but said "fighting terrorism in Idlib is inevitable".
The regime of President Bashar al-Assad has increased its rhetoric about the resumption of control of Idlib and surrounding areas over the past month.
The threat comes after it has resumed areas around the capital Damascus and in southern Syria earlier this year, thanks to a combination of bombings and deadly disposals.
– Regime, the Kurds face each other –
With the skyrocketing of Russian raids on Saturday, Moscow aimed to pressure Ankara to accept an agreement for the resumption of the Idlib regime, according to analyst Nicholas Heras.
"Russia reminds Turkey that it must remain in the good graces of Russia if Turkey wants to avoid a painful catastrophe in northwestern Syria," said the researcher at the Center for New American Security .
Idlib's head of health, Munzer al-Khalil, warned on Saturday that a large-scale military operation could result in "the most catastrophic crisis of our war".
Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov, for his part, said that Moscow had "irrefutable information" that Syrian rebels were planning a "provocation" in Idlib province to justify Western intervention.
More than 350,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since the start of the civil war in 2011, with the brutal crackdown on anti-Assad protests.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, clashes between Kurdish forces and regime fighters in the divided city of Qamishli in the north-east of the country killed 18 fighters, the Kurdish forces and the Observatory said.
Kurdish forces control most of Qamishli, but regime fighters and Allied militia hold part of the city and its airport.
The Observatory said the shooting broke out when Kurdish security forces at a checkpoint demanded that regime fighters leave their patrol vehicle but they refused.
"When they did not comply, the shooting started on the car," Abdel Rahman said.
Kurdish forces reported retaliating against the regime's fire.
With the support of the United States, the Kurds of Syria played a key role in the war against the Islamic State group, during which they captured large swathes of northern and northeastern Syria.
The Damascus regime is committed to reintegrating Kurdish-controlled areas, if necessary. At the end of July, he opened talks with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
