ANKARA

The regime airstrikes Monday killed 14 civilians and injured 27 others in Syria after targeting the Idlib de-escalation zone, said Turkey’s National Defense Ministry.

"The regime's inhumane air strikes continue to kill innocent people in Idlib," the ministry said on Twitter.

The airstrikes targeted two marketplaces and areas heavily populated by civilians, it noted, adding that among the casualties were women and children.

In 2018, Turkey and Russia agreed to turn Idlib into a de-escalation zone in which acts of aggression are expressly prohibited.

The de-escalation zone is currently home to some 4 million civilians, including hundreds of thousands displaced in recent years by regime forces from throughout the war-weary country.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and more than 10 million others displaced, according to UN officials.