{Bombing of livestock market in ISIL-held Oqayrabat village possibly carried out by Russian fighter jets, monitor says.}<\/p>\n
Air strikes have killed at least 11 civilians and wounded dozens in ISIL-held central Syrian village in Hama province, according to a monitor.<\/p>\n
Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), said “the raids targeted a livestock market in the village of Oqayrabat” that is held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.<\/p>\n
“They are probably Russian air strikes,” he said.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera could not independently confirm the Britain-based SOHR’s report.<\/p>\n
The SOHR, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information, says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used.<\/p>\n
Abdel Rahman said the raids on the village were part of “new military operations by the Syrian regime and its Russian ally targeting jihadist positions in Hama province”.<\/p>\n
Syrian and Russian jets on Saturday were heavily bombing ISIL fighters north and east of Palmyra, which has changed hands several times in Syria’s nearly six-year war.<\/p>\n
Oqayrabat lies northwest of Palmyra, the ancient desert city that was recaptured by Russian-backed government forces from ISIL on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The road between the two had been often used by ISIL to travel between the provinces of Hama and Homs, where Palmyra lies.<\/p>\n
Also on Saturday, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported that the government recaptured eight villages from ISIL in northeast parts of Aleppo province supported by the Russian air strikes.<\/p>\n
According SOHR, the aim of the operation was ISIL-held Khafsah, the main station pumping water into Aleppo.<\/p>\n
Residents of Aleppo, Syria’s second city, have been without mains water for 47 days after ISIL cut the supply.<\/p>\n
The fighting over the past week has sparked an exodus of “more than 30,000 civilians, most of them women and children”, SOHR said on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Most of the displaced went to areas around Manbij city of Aleppo province, held by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters who are also fighting ISIL.<\/p>\n
An AFP correspondent in Manbij saw dozens of families speeding towards the relative safety of the city on motorcycles and in small buses and cars.<\/p>\n
Many looked exhausted as they lined up at a checkpoint manned by the Manbij Military Council, the SDF unit that controls the town, to be searched and get permission to enter.<\/p>\n
Ibrahim al-Quftan, co-chair of Manbij’s civil administration, told AFP that as many as 40,000 displaced had arrived in recent days.<\/p>\n
“The numbers of displaced people here are still rising because of the clashes between the Syrian regime and Daesh (ISIL),” Quftan said.<\/p>\n
“These people are suffering very difficult circumstances.”<\/p>\n
Manbij already hosts “tens of thousands of displaced people that fled previous clashes in the area and are living in difficult circumstances”, said SOHR’s Abdel Rahman.<\/p>\n
“This will make it difficult [for local authorities] to welcome a new wave of displaced people, given their inability to tend to their pressing needs.”<\/p>\n
Also on Saturday, Turkey said a MiG-23 fighter jet, probably belonging to the Syrian air force, had crashed on the Syrian side of the border. There was no pilot in the wreckage.<\/p>\n
“The MiG-23, believed to have been owned by the Syrian regime, crashed on the Syrian side of the border,” Binali Yildirim, Turkey’s prime minister, said.<\/p>\n
“The pilot may have bailed out and come down on either side … . A search and rescue operation is under way.<\/p>\n
“It’s not clear why the plane crashed. It may be due to weather conditions.”<\/p>\n
Source:Al Jazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Bombing of livestock market in ISIL-held Oqayrabat village possibly carried out by Russian fighter jets, monitor says.} Air strikes have killed at least 11 civilians and wounded dozens in ISIL-held central Syrian village in Hama province, according to a monitor. Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), said “the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[160],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-33016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-theophile-niyitegeka"],"bylines":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"contributors":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33016\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33016"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=33016"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=33016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}