Beirut: Syrian government air strikes on two rebel-held areas of the central province of Homs killed at least 25 civilians, 11 of them children, a monitoring group said on Sunday.
Sixteen members of a single family were among 18 people killed in raids late Saturday on the town of Talbisseh, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
They included 10 children and three women, said the Britain-based monitoring group which has a wide network of sources inside Syria.
In the Waer district on the outskirts of Homs - the only area of Syria’s third city still in rebel hands - the evening air strikes killed seven people, including a child, the Observatory added.
Homs was once dubbed “the capital of the revolution” against President Bashar Al Assad.
But government forces retook control of the whole of the rest of the city in May when rebel fighters withdrew from central districts under a UN-brokered deal that ended a punishing two-year siege.
On October 17, government airstrikes on a Syrian rebel-held town near Damascus killed at least 16 people. At least five strikes targeted buildings in the town of Douma on Friday evening, said local activist Hassan Taqulden and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The bombs killed at least three children and one woman, said the Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground in Syria.
Syria’s air force stepped up its bombing of Douma over the past three months as part of a broader battle to assert government control around Damascus and prevent rebels from staging mortar and other attacks on the city from its outskirts. The rebel attacks have also killed scores of civilians. Activists say Syria’s three-year civil war has killed more than 200,000 people.
