Syria regime kills 20 civilians, retakes symbolic town

At least 20 civilians died in Syrian regime strikes on targets including schools, a monitor said Tuesday, in a relentless advance on the country's last major opposition holdout that saw loyalists seize a symbolic town.

Pro-regime bombing killed at least nine children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as Russian-backed regime forces wage a fierce offensive to seize Idlib, the final major territory in Syria still controlled by rebels and jihadists.

Regime strikes in Idlib, the main city in the densely populated, ever-shrinking enclave of the same name, killed a schoolchild and three teachers as well as two others, said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

At least six children were among 10 civilians killed in Maarat Misrin, a town just north of Idlib city on the road to the Turkish border, the Observatory said.

Another four people, including a mother and her two children, died in regime fire on Binnish, northeast of Idlib city, he said. Later, the Observatory reported that regime forces had recaptured 19 towns and villages over 48 hours.

Among them was Kafranbel, a symbolic town that was among the first to rebel against Damascus.

The Idlib region hosts some three million people in increasingly desperate conditions.

Save the Children on Tuesday called for schools to be spared.

"Schools must be safe havens for children, even in a conflict zone," the charity's Syria response director, Sonia Khush, said.

"Today's attacks are another sign that fighting in northwest Syria has reached catastrophic levels of violence against children and civilians... Nowhere is safe, not even school."