Syria: 28 civilians killed, 55 wounded in airstrikes

By Halit Suleyman

ALEPPO / IDLIB, Syria

At least 28 civilians were killed in Russian and regime airstrikes across Syria on Tuesday, civil defense officials have told Anadolu Agency.

Twenty people were killed and 40 others were wounded after a regime helicopter and Russian jets struck a residential area of the northwestern city of Aleppo.

Syrian regime helicopters also hit el-Bara village in Syria's western province of Idlib with barrel bombs killing eight people and wounding 15 others, the officials said.

Meanwhile, a local activist in Damascus told Anadolu Agency that regime warplanes carried out 15 airstrikes on Tuesday in the city, wounding several people.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests -- which erupted as part of the "Arab Spring" uprisings -- with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to the UN.

The Syrian Center for Policy Research, however, put the death toll from the six-year conflict at more than 470,000 people.

*Anadolu Agency correspondent Ilker Girit contributed to this story from Istanbul.