Between six and eight civilians, including three to four children and three women, were killed and nine to 11 others, including four children and three women, were injured in alleged Russian and regime strikes on the town of Ihsem around midnight on July 17/July 18, 2021.

According to an Al Jazeera correspondent in Syria, “7 civilians from the same family, all women and children, were killed as a result of missile strikes by the Syrian regime forces that targeted a house in the town of Ihsem in Idlib countryside, and others were wounded.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights originally identified “three women and two children were killed on Saturday evening in the town of Ihsem in the southern countryside of Idlib” and later updated their toll to seven civilians killed, including four women and three children, while Al Modon provided the numbers “3 children and 3 women from one family were killed”. Horrya News identified one of the civilians killed as a health worker.

Civil Defense said on its Facebook page that “6 civilians (3 children and 3 women) were killed, and 9 other civilians were wounded, including 4 children and 3 women, in an initial outcome”. Al Mohrar Media published that the number of injured was more than 10 people, “most of them in critical condition, and the ambulance and civil defense teams worked to transport them to medical points.”

A post from Jabaal Zawya Today named the victims killed in the bombing: Yousra Sergawi, wife of Muhammad Taha, 50 years old; Heba Taqiqa, daughter of Muhammad Taqiqa, 20 years old; Maryam Barakat, Taha’s wife, 20 years old; Khadija Taqiqa, daughter of Samer, 6 years old; Iman Taqiqa, daughter of Samer 4 years old; Tasneem, daughter of Samer, 5 years old; Widad, Sadiq’s wife, 45 years old. A tweet from @Alassaf1977 identified that Taha Taqiqa, the son of Muhammad Taha Taqaqa, 26 years old, had died from his wounds. Aya Sophia Samer Taqiqa, granddaughter of Muhammad Taha, 1 year old, died two days later of her wounds, as reported by @hadikhraat.

Ehsim Now posted the names of those injured: Muhammad Taha Taqiqa, 55 years old; Akram Taqiqa, the son of Muhammad Taha Taqiqa, a minor injury, 14 years old; Hamza Teqiqa, the son of Muhammad Taha, a minor injury, 4 years old; Saba Taqiqa, daughter of Muhammad Taqiqa, a 14-year-old, hand amputation injury; Hadeel Taqiqa, daughter of Muhammad Taha Tuqiqa, Injury, 17 years old; Fatima Taqiqa, daughter of Muhammad Taha, a 20-year-old injured; Sadiq Taqiqa Ibn Abdul Latif, a minor injury, 50 years old; Samer Taqiqa.

Among the dead is Taha Taqiqa, who “waited for his bride [Maryam Barakat] for several years until she graduated from university, and after her graduation she came to him and they got married three days ago. Yesterday, a shell fell and killed him and his bride, along with six other family members, in the town of Ihsim in Idlib countryside” according to a tweet from @Alassaf1977.

Samer Muhammad Sabri Taqiqa, the father of Aya, Iman, Khadija and Tasneem, lost four of his daughters and insisted that he dress Aya in her Eid costume before he bid her final farewell, Al Jazeera reported. He named his daughter Aya Sophia because she was “born in conjunction with the opening of the Hagia Sophia Mosque in Istanbul last year by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.”

@Gurbtwatan tweeted that it took “more than 30 hours” for the Civil Defense teams to retrieve the body of Iman Samer Taqiqa from under the rubble.

France24 reported that “an AFP photographer in Ihsem saw paramedics working after midnight under floodlights to retrieve the body of a woman from the rubble of the roof of a collapsed house. They wrapped the body in a blanket and took it to an ambulance. A survivor of the family told AFP that visitors were gathered at the house to congratulate a family member on his marriage.”

The majority of sources that reported on the incident attributed the strikes to the regime or the regime and Russia. Al Araby News blames the regime and reported that regime forces bombed the village “from the Hamidiya base in the city of Maarat al-Numan”. However, Shaam News identified artillery shelling, originating from the Russian forces, with advanced Krassenpol missiles, coinciding with the flight of Russian reconnaissance planes that did not leave the airspace. They added that “the defense teams had great difficulty working, as reconnaissance planes monitored the area at night,” for fear that they would launch a double strike on the rescue crews.

The incident occured around midnight.

At least three civilians, including a White Helmet and elderly woman, were killed and two others, both White Helmets, were injured in alleged Russian or regime strikes on the village of Sarja on July 17, 2021.

Syrian Today reported that “three volunteers from the Civil Defense were hit by laser-guided Krassenpol shells while trying to rescue the injured and recover the dead”.

Syrian Network for Human Rights provided the information that “Just as the Syrian Civil Defense (SCD) team reached the site and residents of the area gathered to aid the injured and evacuated victims, the same forces carried out a ‘double tap’ artillery strike at the same site, causing the death of three civilians, including an elderly woman, and Hammam al Asi, a media worker for the Civil Defense agency, as well as injuring two other members of the SCD with various degrees in addition to the severe damage to the house and the surrounding area. SNHR notes that Mrs. Saeedah al Asi, aged 60, the elderly woman who was killed in the second attack, was the grandmother of the three young sisters killed in the first attack.”

According to @AmruSalahuddien, “Russian artillery deliberately targeted, after aerial reconnaissance, the Syrian Civil Defense team while rescuing civilians trapped under the rubble in the village of Sarja”.

@anasanas84 listed the Civil Defense members that were injured in the strike: Kamel Zureik, Hammam Al-Asi and Mahmoud Othman. @EdlibNN later reported that Hammam Al-Asi died from his injuries and @jisrtv added that his colleagues had been waiting in the hospital while he was in the operating room but he did not survive. Syrian Civil Defense reported that his last words to his colleagues were “I want to go back and document the crimes of the regime” and that he would be buried in his beloved village of Bzabur.

One of the victims of the strike, Hammam Al-Asi, was photographing the incident when he was killed and was able to capture an image of the moment the strike occurred, posted by @AmruSalahuddien. Hammam was a civil defense journalist in the Bzabur center.

Al-Durar Al-Shamiya published a statement from Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham that “commended the efforts made by Hammam in helping the injured and exhuming the bodies of the martyrs from his family and brothers, in addition to documenting the moments of emergency that exposed the reality of the Assad regime and the Russian occupier.”

Syrian Civil Defense published a statement that “Hammam al-Asi conveyed the truth to the world as evidence of the crimes of the regime and Russia. Their missiles were present, as they used to kill the truth and stifle votes.”

Sources were conflicted as to whether Russia or the regime were responsible. Syrian Civil Defense attributed the strikes to both the regime and Russia while Edlib Media Center blamed only the regime and a tweet from @AmruSalahuddien blamed only Russia.

The local time of the incident is unknown.

Between four and eight civilians, including two to three children and a woman, were killed and three others were injured in alleged Russian or regime strikes on the town of Sarja on July 17, 2021.

@abdalwhab761identified “eight martyrs” from the bombing of Sarja while @OrientNews reported that six civilians were killed. A correspondent from @jisrtv also provided that six civilians were killed, including “3 children, brothers and their grandmother” and the Civil Defense member killed in the second strike assessed in incident R4345.

@syriapostnew1 tweeted about “the death of an entire family of 4 members, including a woman and two children” and a post from Edlib Media Center identified the members of the family as a man, his wife and three children. The correspondent of “Al-Suri Al-Youm” told Syrian Today that the artillery shelling resulted in “killing a woman and two children, and a number of wounded”. Syrian Civil Defense put the number of injured at six, including the three Civil Defense members injured in subsequent incident R4345.

A post by Assad Hamoudi named victims of the incident. #martyrs: Ritaj Ezzo Zureik, a child; Mays Ezzo Zureik is a girl; Sa’ida Ezzo Zureik is a baby girl; Hussein Haj Musa. #injuries: Hammam Haj Darwish; Abdul-Malik Satifi

Syrian Network for Human Rights provided details that the strikes killed ” three children sisters, named as Ritaj, Mais and Saeedah Izzou Zreiq, aged 11, 13 and 16 respectively, and injuring the other members of their family”.

The reporter @mhmdfaisel interviewed the mother of some of the victims, who told the reporter “My daughters are three under the rubble, where are my daughters!?”. Their home was also destroyed in the strikes. @OrientNews also reported that an entire family was trapped under the rubble.

Sources were conflicted as to who was responsible for the strikes. Various sources identified “laser-guided Krasnopol missiles” as being used in the strike, which are made by Russia and Syrian Civil Defense blamed the strikes on both the regime and Russia. However, sources such as Baladi News attributed the shelling to the regime.

Syrian Today reported that “the village of Sarjah is located in Jabal al-Zawiya near Jericho from the south, a civilian area controlled by the Suqur al-Sham faction, and no military presence was recorded inside it.” They also provided that the reason that Sarja was bombed is they’re “considered the first line in the confrontation with the regime because of its proximity to the line of contact in the Al-Ruwaiha area”.

The incident occured around dawn.