Assad regime attacks kill 16 civilians in Syria's Idlib

Regime attacks killed 16 civilians in Syria's opposition-run Idlib on Wednesday, a war monitor said, the latest violence to rattle a region housing three million people.

Eleven civilians were killed in regime air strikes on a village in the Jabal al-Zawiya region of southeastern Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The bombardment destroyed shops and ripped apart bodies, according to an AFP photographer, who found human remains more than a hundred meters away from the site of the strike.

Rescue workers were seen pulling bodies from under the rubble.

Four other civilians were killed in air raids on nearby towns and villages in southern Idlib, while one civilian died in air strikes on the edges of Idlib's eponymous provincial capital, the Britain-based Observatory said.

The latest violence comes after U.N. chief Antonio Guterres called Tuesday on Russia and Turkey to "stabilize the situation" in the Idlib region.

"I am deeply concerned about the escalation of the fighting in Idlib," he told reporters, adding that "civilians are paying a horrific price".

His comments came ahead of a U.N. Security Council session on the situation.

The world is facing "a humanitarian disaster unfolding before our eyes," Mark Lowcock, the U.N.'s humanitarian chief, told the council.

Parts of Aleppo, Hama and Idlib are supposed to be protected from a massive regime offensive by a buffer zone deal that Russia and Turkey signed in September.

The Syrian government and Russia have upped their bombardment of the region since late April, killing more than 400 civilians, according to the Observatory.

Syria's war has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions since it started in 2011 with the repression of anti-government protests.