(Previous Incident Codes: R3946RS4183)

Six civilians were killed in reported Russian airstrikes in the town of Maarat al Numan in southern Idlib on the evening of November 20th 2019. Multiple sources alleged that at least five casualties were members of the same family, including four children and their mother. The strikes occurred on “World Children’s Day”.

Between 11 and 24 people were also injured in the strikes, with sources reporting that at least three of those injured were children.

Rami Abdel Rahman, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said shortly after the event that he expected the death toll to rise given the severity of injuries sustained in the attack. As reported in news outlet Zaman Alwasi, “The Observatory added that more than one Russian warplane took turns bombing the targeted place with double raids, with the aim of killing the largest number of civilians and civil defense crews and rescue teams.

The Observatory confirmed an initial outcome of 6 dead, mostly children, a young man and a woman, and the injury of more than 16 others, most of them children. Civil defense teams are still trying to rescue and retrieve civilians who are still stuck under the rubble, noting that Russian warplanes are still flying over the region, escorted by a Russian reconnaissance plane.”

At least two sources shared reports from an AFP photographer, who “saw a paramedic pull the dusty corpse of a little girl out of the rubble and put [her] in an ambulance”. (France24).