Civil war: Russian strikes kill 200 people in Syria

Sydney: In Syria, the Damascus to Aleppo highway was cut by Jihadist fighters on Thursday, and Russian air strikes killed around 200 people during an offensive there, Agence France-Presse reported.

The Syrian Human Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitor, informed that the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied forces attacked some government-held areas of northern Aleppo province by surprise a day before. This has triggered the fiercest fight ever in years, the human rights monitor said.

The monitor said that there were 182 casualties, including 102 fighters from HTS, 19 from allied factions and 61 regime forces and allied groups.

Russia bombarded a countryside in Aleppo, killing 19 civilians on Thursday, the monitor said, while a civilian got killed in shelling by the Syrian army, too.

A close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Russia intervened in the Syrian civil war in 2015, turning the fight in favour of the president.

Meanwhile, HTS and its allied teams, backed by neighbouring Turkey, attempted to cut off the Damascus-Aleppo international highway and control the junction between the M4 and M5 highways, according to the monitor. It said that the highway had been shut down after it was reopened by regime forces years ago.

The violence in the region has displaced more than 14,000 people, of which nearly half are children, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said

When Syria has been hit by civil war for more than a decade, the intensity of the conflict has surged in recent years.