Syria army air strike hits school bus, kills four children

At least four Syrian primary school children were killed and 10 wounded on Monday when a government air strike hit their bus in the northwest of the country, a monitor said. 

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said most of those wounded and killed when the Syrian air force hit a school bus near the village of Jubass in Idlib province were under the age of 10. 

"The toll could go rise as there are serious injuries," said the monitor, which has a wide network of sources on the ground across Syria. 

Idlib is largely in the hands of Al-Nusra Front, which now holds two strategic military bases in the province. 

Meanwhile, a government helicopter targeted a market with an explosive barrel in the village of Sefouhan, located in the Mount Zawiya region in Idlib, a police source told The Anadolu Agency.

Three female teachers were killed in the attack.

“The attack has targeted civilians and the regime is taken revenge on civilians after losing Wadi Al-Dayf and Al-Hamidiyeh bases,” First Lieutenant of the Free Syrian Police, Mohamed Halabi, said. 

The Free Syrian Police was established in 2012 in Aleppo and aims to ensure security in the areas controlled by the opposition. 

The Observatory reported the deaths of 29 civilians in by government air raids across Syria on Tuesday.

US-led strikes kill over 1,000 IS militants  

Syria's air force is a significant tool in the arsenal of President Bashar al-Assad, whose forces have fought a devastating conflict against insurgents as well as peaceful dissidents since 2011.

Meanwhile, US-led air strikes in Syria have killed more than 1,000 militants in the past three months, nearly all of them from the Islamic State group, the Observatory said Tuesday.

"At least 1,171 have been killed in the Arab and international air strikes (since September 23), including 1,119 jihadists of the Islamic State group and Al-Nusra Front," said the Observatory, which relies on a network of activists and medics across the war-ravaged country for its information.

Among the dead were 1,046 members of IS, which is the main target of the air campaign.

Seventy-two of those killed were members of, the al-Qaeda linked Al-Nusra Front, while another was a militant prisoner whose affiliation was unknown, an Observatory statement said.

The remaining 52 were civilians.

More than 200,000 people have been killed in Syria since the civil war began, and around half the population has been forced to flee.

WHO gets green light to deliver medicine to Aleppo

Meanwhile, Damascus has agreed to allow deliveries of desperately needed medical supplies to opposition-held parts of Aleppo and two other hard-to-reach areas, the World Health Organization said Monday.

"We have gotten all of the approval letters, we are ready to deliver," the UN agency's Syria representative Elizabeth Hoff told AFP.

While stressing the deliveries would still depend on the security situation, she described the approvals as "a big step forward."

The Syrian government and other parties to the conflict had agreed to allow and facilitate deliveries of medicine for chronic diseases, vaccines, intravenous fluids and surgical supplies to opposition-controlled areas in Aleppo governorate, the besieged Damascus district of Muadamiya, and the flashpoint Eastern Ghouta region near the capital.

Muadamiya has received just one delivery of medical supplies in the past two years, she said.

The health situation across war-ravaged Syria is critical and deteriorating and is particularly dire in areas largely isolated from aid, Hoff said.

And she said waterborne diseases were continuing to spread even in winter, serving as testimony of horrendous sanitation and hygiene situations.

"In some shelters for displaced people, 50 to 70 people share a single toilet," she said.