BEIRUT: Government forces intensified their bombardment of rebel-held towns and villages in northwest Syria, killing at least eight people Tuesday, including five in an airstrike on a market, opposition activists said.
Al-Watan daily said the army had captured the villages of al-Janabara and Tel Othman, where rebels said on Monday they had repulsed government assaults. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government troops had seized Tel Othman.
Northwest Syria is the only significant territory still in rebel hands. The area being targeted in the latest bombardment was the subject of a Russian-Turkish agreement last September to hold off a government offensive.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based activist group that monitors the war, said 69 civilians had been killed by bombardments since April 30. At least 41 insurgents had been killed by air strikes and fighting, it said.
The dominant rebel force in the northwest said on Monday it would meet any government attempt to advance with "iron and fire". The group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, includes al Qaeda's former affiliate the Nusra Front.
Syrian President Bashar Assad has recaptured most of the country from rebels since Russia joined the war on his side in 2015, deploying its air power in support of the army and allied Iran-backed militias.
The United Nations has said the northwestern Idlib region is home to 3 million people, half of whom have already fled their homes at least once during the conflict, and that a big battle there risks causing a new humanitarian disaster.
Bombardments since April 28 have displaced more than 158,000 people, the U.S.-based Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations (UOSSM) said on Monday.