The UK-based war monitor, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), said pro-Assad forces killed four civilians during artillery fire in Idlib province.
Shelling in Idlib killed one woman in a residential neighborhood. Artillery fire hitting near a swimming pool on the edge of the provincial capital also killed a top university official and his son, as well as another man.
A correspondent, tied to an international news agency, in the field saw rescue workers and civilians carry the body of a young woman down from her family home and into an ambulance, as alarmed onlookers fled the scene fearing more shelling.
The Idlib region is home to around three million people with two-thirds of them displaced from other parts of the country during the decade-long civil war.
In March 2020, a ceasefire deal was brokered by pro-Assad Russia and Turkey to prevent a new offensive by the Assad regime.
Over recent months, regime forces increased their shelling on the southern edges of the stronghold.
