[Rudaw] At least two civilians were killed and three injured on Monday in artillery strikes carried out by the Syrian army on the northwestern Idlib province, the last remaining rebel bastion in the area, a war monitor reported.
“Two civilians were killed and three others were injured as a result of artillery shelling by regime forces targeting homes in the city of Sarmin, east of Idlib city,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor.
Half of Idlib province, as well as parts of Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia provinces, are the last rebel-held bastions in the country after President Bashar al-Assad seized back swathes of territory over the course of the brutal Syrian civil war, which erupted in 2011.
Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, is the prominent force among dozens of different rebel factions operating in the rebel-held northwest. It controls large swathes of Idlib and parts of Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia provinces.
It has been internationally recognized as a terrorist organization.
A ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey has been in place in northwest Syria since March 2020, but the area has witnessed a recent flare-up in violence.
Over 13 million Syrians have been displaced since the start of the civil war, more than six million of which are refugees who have fled the war-torn country, according to a report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). 
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