Suspected Russian warplanes kill scores in Syrian city: rescue workers
Air strikes believed to have been carried out by Russian warplanes killed scores of people in the center of the rebel-held city of Idlib in northwest Syria on December 20, rescue workers and residents said.
They said at least six strikes had hit a busy market place in the heart of the city, several government buildings and residential areas. Rescue workers said they had confirmed 43 dead but that at least 30 more bodies had been retrieved that had still to be identified. Over 150 people were wounded with some of the serious cases sent to hospitals in Turkey.
"There are a lot of corpses under the rubble," Yasser Hammo, a civil defense worker, said via an Internet messaging system, adding that volunteers and civil defense workers were still pulling bodies out.
Footage on social media and the pro-opposition Orient TV station showed makeshift ambulances rushing with injured civilians through an area where people were searching for survivors among the debris of collapsed buildings.
One local resident, Sameh al-Muazin, said he had seen mangled bodies in the main Jalaa street of the city, adding that people feared a further round of intensive bombing.
"Everyone is afraid that this is just the beginning," he said.
Idlib, the capital of a northwestern province of the same name, became an important center for rebel-controlled northwest Syria after it was captured earlier this year by a coalition of Islamist insurgent groups known as Jaish al Fateh which includes al Qaeda's Syrian wing Nusra Front.