By Esref Musa and Burak Karacaoglu

IDLIB, Syria (AA): In an area of northwestern Syria supposed to be free of acts of aggression, on Sunday at least nine civilians were killed and 10 injured in Russian airstrikes, a local civil defense agency said. Idlib is controlled by , Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an extremist group in Syria.

The Russian warplanes carried out airstrikes on the villages of Bsakla, Uraynibah and two other villages in the northwestern province of Idlib, according to the Syrian opposition’s aircraft observatory.

The Syrian government also carried out mortar, gun, and rocket attacks in the Kafr Nabl district and three other villages of Idlib.

Following the airstrikes, civil defense teams launched search and rescue efforts.

The death toll from the attacks on residential areas in the Idlib de-escalation zone over the last month totals 75, including 13 children, said the White Helmets civil defense group.

Additionally, in the first half of November the attacks of the Assad regime and its supporter Russia have displaced some 40,000 civilians within the Idlib de-escalation zone, according to Syria’s Response Coordination Group, a local NGO.

Turkey and Russia agreed last September to turn Idlib into a de-escalation zone where acts of aggression are expressly prohibited.

The Syrian regime and its allies, however, have consistently broken the terms of the cease-fire, launching frequent attacks inside the zone.

The de-escalation zone is currently home to some four million civilians, including hundreds of thousands displaced in recent years by regime forces from throughout the war-weary country.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and more than 10 million others displaced, according to UN officials.

[Photo: Civil defence members and civilians conduct search and rescue operation among the debris of houses and area after Russia carried out airstrikes over Mellace town in Idlib, Syria on November 17, 2019. Photographer: Muhabiri Izeddin Idilbi/AA]