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The brutal regime's army killed seven civilians, three of them children, on Thursday in its third deadly bombardment of the region, a monitor said.

Several people were seriously wounded in the morning bombardment of the village of , south of Idlib, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The army has stepped up its bombing of the northwestern enclave since Saturday when President Bashar al-Assad took the oath of office for a new term vowing to make "liberating those parts of the homeland that still need to be" one of his top priorities.

The same day strikes on the Idlib villages of Sarja and Ehsin killed 14 civilians, seven of them children.

Two days earlier shelling of Idlib and the town of Fuaa further north killed nine civilians, three of them children, the Observatory said.

The rebel-held Idlib region is home to nearly three million people, two-thirds of them displaced from other parts of the country.

A March 2020 deal brokered by the rival sides' main foreign backers Russia and Turkey has eased fighting on the front line but the region remains in the government's sights.

Elsewhere in the country, Kurdish-led forces control a large swathe of the east after expelling the Islamic State group from the region.

The Syrian conflict began in 2011 after the regime led by dictator Bashar Al-Assad brutally repressed peaceful pro-democracy protests. His father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad ruled Syria with an iron fist from 1971 until he died in 2000.

Around 1.2 million Syrians, or one in 18 of the population, are thought to have been arrested or detained at some point in the war. The Assad regime isÌýnotorious for its systemetic torture and murder of prisoners.Ìý

The regime has also forcibly disappeared tens of thousands of people believed to be critical of the regime.Ìý

The Syrian Network for Human Rights reported that in April alone, there were 147 cases of arbitrary detention with the Syrian regime said to be responsible for 56 of these cases.