Arab News
BEIRUT: A human rights group said on Wednesday Syrian-Russian airstrikes and artillery attacks on a town in southern Syria last month killed 10 civilians in and near a school.
Bill Van Esveld, senior children’s rights researcher at the Human Rights Watch (HRW), said that “as long as no one is held responsible for such repeated unlawful attacks, it’s likely they will continue.”
The HRW said one of the airstrikes hit the courtyard of a middle school in the town of Tafas in the southern province of Daraa, killing eight people, including a child.
The group said most of those killed were members of a family who had been displaced from another town, adding that two other civilians, including a child, were killed an hour earlier by artillery attacks near the school.
Meanwhile, Syrian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday a Russian soldier died after being hit by mortar fire in the central Hama province of the country.
Capt. Nikolay Afanasov was killed by “sudden mortar fire on a Syrian government army camp,” the ministry said, indicating that he was part of a group of military instructors who were training Syrian soldiers.
His death raises to 32 the number of Russian soldiers killed in combat in Syria, according to the ministry figures. Another soldier committed suicide during the first month of Russia’s operation in Syria which began in September 2015.
Also on Wednesday, the UN said it is using newly-opened land routes to expand food deliveries to areas around Raqqa, where Syrian forces are battling Daesh militants in their self-declared capital.
The new access has allowed the World Food Programme to deliver food to rural areas north of the city for the first time in three years.
The UN agency said it is now delivering food every month to nearly 200,000 people in eight hard-to-reach locations inside Raqqa province as well as other areas in a neighbori.