Syria children killed as Russian missile hits school

At least 15 people have been killed, including 12 children, after a Russian warplane bombed a school in Syria’s Aleppo province, activists said. 

The death toll from Monday’s strike in Ain Jara, 15km north of Aleppo city, was expected to go up as some of the survivors died of their injuries, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

An Al Jazeera correspondent at the scene said the school was in territory controlled by Syrian opposition groups and that rescuers were continuing to search for survivors in the rubble.

The attack is the latest deadly incident blamed on the Russian military, with nearly 100 people killed in a series of air raids on the town of Maarat al-Numan in Idlib province on Saturday. 

Russian air strikes have killed more than 1,730 civilians since they started in September, according to a report by Syria’s main opposition bloc, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC).

The strikes ostensibly target the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group but the opposition says civilians and groups fighting the Syrian regime are the main target.

“Nearly 94 percent of the 12,000 sorties the Russian air force has so far flown in Syria targeted civilians and the Free Syrian Army,” the SNC said in a statement calling on the UN to act against Russian “violations”.

Russia’s defence ministry denied in December 2015 that it targets civilians in its air strikes after an Amnesty International report accused it of doing so.

Speaking to journalists, ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the report contained “trite cliches” and “fake information”.