Insurgents fired rockets into a government-held Christian town in northwestern Syria on Sunday, killing six people, including five children who were playing near a monastery and wounding several others, state media and a local priest said.
State TV said the shelling just before noon caused widespread material damage to the town of Suqailabiyah. It said the dead also included a 35-year-old woman.
State news agency SANA said Syrian troops had retaliated by firing shells toward insurgents’ positions on the southern edge of Idlib province, the last major rebel stronghold in the country. Al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, is the main insurgent group in the area.
Priest Maher Haddad told The Associated Press by telephone from Suqailabiyah that a rocket struck near a group of children, instantly killing five and wounding others. He said the woman was killed in a nearby street by a separate rocket.
“The kids went out to play after some days of calm,” Haddad said, since the town had not targeted for days by insurgents who were pushed further north by the Syrian army.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, also reported that six people were killed, adding that eight others, including six children were wounded.
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