Projectile event in Idlib, Jabal al-Zawiya area, Syrian Arab Republic on Sat 3rd July 2021

Seven children were among nine civilians killed by pro-government artillery fire on Saturday in Syria's last major rebel stronghold of Idlib in the country's northwest, a UK-based activist group said. The shelling on Saturday morning also wounded 16 others in several locations of the Jabal al-Zawiya area in the south of the stronghold, the Syria Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said. It killed five members of the same family - a man, his wife, and their three children - in the village of Iblin, as well as two children in the village of Balyun, and two more children in the village of Balshun, SOHR added. In Iblin, a photographer for Middle East Eye (MEE) saw the bodies of the family prepared for burial at a health dispensary. A nurse on site confirmed to Agence France-Presse (AFP) that five members of the same family had been killed. In Balyun, sources told MEE that an attack left two young girls dead, and wounded their parents.