The Syrian army shelled the Idlib region Thursday killing seven civilians, three of them children, in its third deadly bombardment of the rebel bastion in a week, a monitor said.
Several people were seriously wounded in the morning bombardment of the village of Iblin, south of Idlib, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The army has stepped up its bombing of the northwestern enclave since Saturday when President Bashar al-Assad took the oath of office for a new term vowing to make "liberating those parts of the homeland that still need to be" one of his top priorities.