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Syria’s crisis started with peaceful protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s government in March 2011, but quickly morphed into a full-blown civil war following the government’s brutal crackdown on the protesters.
The tide turned in Assad’s favour against rebel groups in 2015, when Russia provided key military backing to Syria, along with that from Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
So far, the war has killed half a million people, wounded hundreds of thousands and left many parts of the country destroyed. It has displaced half of the country’s prewar population of 23 million, including more than 5 million refugees.
While most Arab governments have restored ties with the government in Damascus, the country remains divided. A north-west enclave is under the control of al-Qaeda-linked militants from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group and Turkish-backed opposition fighters, and the north-east is under control of US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
Following the attack, the Syrian government forces shelled villages in Idlib province, in the rebel-held north-west. There were no immediate reports of casualties there.
The Syrian army shelled another village in the region earlier on Thursday, killing at least five civilians, activists and emergency workers said. The shelling hit a family house on the outskirts of the village of Kafr Nouran in western Aleppo province, according to the opposition-held north-western civil defence organisation known as the White Helmets.
The dead were an older woman and four of her children, according to the Observatory. Nine other members of the family were wounded, it said.
The north-western is mostly held by al-Qaeda linked fighters as well as Turkish-backed opposition forces. The vast majority of around 4.1 million people residing in the enclave live in poverty, relying on humanitarian aid to survive. Many of them are Syrians, internally displaced by the war from other parts of the country.
Meanwhile, authorities in the north-eastern, which is under US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said Turkish drone attacks struck in Hassakeh and Qamishli provinces on Thursday, hitting oil production facilities, electrical substations and a dam.
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A statement from the Kurdish authorities said six members of their security forces and two civilians were killed.
Turkey didn’t immediately comment on the strikes but Ankara says the main Syrian Kurdish militia is allied with Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has led an insurgency against Turkey since 1984 that has killed tens of thousands of people. Ankara has declared the PKK a terrorist group.
Syrian Kurdish forces were a major US ally in the war against the militant Islamic State group, which was defeated in Syria in March 2019.
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