Another 11 civilians have been killed by the increasing Syrian regime and Russian aerial bombardment of the country’s north-western province of Idlib.
Hundreds of civilians have been killed in the months-long offensive to capture parts of the last major rebel-held territory in the country’s eight-year civil war, despite the risk to the three million civilians living in the region.
Sunday evening's strikes came as regime troops launched another assault on hardline groups in Hama province, killing 9 fighters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights – a UK war monitor – said.
The fighting in the village of Tal Maleh in northern Hama also left four regime fighters dead.
Northern Hama along with Idlib province and parts of Aleppo and Latakia are under the control of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, an extremist group led by Syria's former Al Qaeda affiliate.
The region is supposed to be protected from a massive government offensive by a deal brokered last September to create a buffer zone. But it has come under increasing fire by Damascus and its backer Moscow over the past three months.
Regime air strikes on Sunday killed five civilians in the Idlib town of Ariha, said the monitor.
Russian raids, meanwhile, killed three civilians in northern Hama.
Shelling and air strikes by the regime also killed three other civilians elsewhere in the northwest.
The bombardment comes a day after regime and Russian air strikes on the region killed 15 civilians, including 11 in Ariha, the monitor said.
Some 3 million people, nearly half of them already displaced from other parts of the country, are trapped in the Idlib region, unable to flee to Turkey as the border has been closed.
Attacks by the Syrian regime and its ally Russia have claimed more than 750 lives there since late April, according to the war monitor.
The UN says more than 400,000 people have been displaced.
The war in Syria has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests.