BEIRUT (Reuters) - Air strikes by Syrian or Russian warplanes on Wednesday killed at least 26 people, most of them schoolchildren, in a village in Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province, rescue workers and a monitoring group said.

The raids hit a residential area and a school in Haas village, the Syrian Civil Defence rescue workers’ network said on its Facebook account.

Syria’s civil war pits President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, Iran and Shi’ite Muslim militias from Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan against an array of mostly Sunni Muslim rebel groups, including some backed by Turkey, Gulf monarchies and the United States.

A report on Syrian state TV quoted a military source as saying a number of militants had been killed when their positions were targeted in Haas, but made no mention of a school.

Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin said: “It’s horrible, I hope we were not involved. It’s the easiest thing for me to say no, but I’m a responsible person, so I need to see what my Ministry of Defence is going to say.”

Anthony Lake, the head of the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, said of the attack: “If deliberate, it is a war crime.”

“This latest atrocity may be the deadliest attack on a school since the war began more than five years ago,” Lake said in a statement.

Idlib, which is in northwest Syria near Aleppo, contains the largest populated area controlled by rebels - both nationalist groups under the banner of the Free Syrian Army and Islamist fighters including the former al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

The Civil Defence network, which operates in rebel-held areas in the country, said 20 of the dead in Wednesday’s attacks were children.

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Photos taken at the scene showed buildings with walls reduced to rubble, including what appeared to be the school with upturned desks and chairs covered in dust.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitor, said the warplanes had struck several locations in Haas including an elementary and middle school, killing at least one teacher as well as children, though it gave a lower toll of 15 children killed.

Western countries and international human rights groups have regularly highlighted the high number of civilian deaths reported after Syrian and Russian air strikes. </s> The Observatory, a British-based war monitor, said warplanes struck several locations in the Haas village, including an elementary and middle school, killing at least one teacher as well as the children.

A report on Syrian state TV quoted a military source as saying a number of militants had been killed when their positions were targeted in Haas, but did not mention a school.

Syria's civil war pits President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, Iran and Shi'ite Muslim militias from Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan against an array of mostly Sunni rebel groups including some backed by Turkey, Gulf monarchies and the U.S.

Idlib, near Aleppo in northwest Syria, contains the largest populated area controlled by rebels, both nationalist groups under the banner of the Free Syrian Army and Islamist ones including the former al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

The high death toll from strikes by the Syrian military and Russian air force in rebel-held areas has prompted criticism from Western countries and international human rights groups. </s> Shelling by Syrian rebels killed several children at a school in government-held western Aleppo on Thursday, state media and a monitoring group said, just a day after air strikes on a school in a rebel-held village in Idlib, 50km (32 miles) away.

The shells hit two neighborhoods, Syrian state news agency SANA reported: the national school in the Shahaba area, killing three children and wounding more than a dozen others, and the other attack killed three people in Hamdaniya.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor of the five-year-old war, said six children under the age of 16 had been killed in the two attacks, including a baby.

Syria's largest city before the war, Aleppo has been divided between government and opposition sectors for years.

Wednesday's air strikes hit a school in the Haas village in rebel-held Idlib, killing at least 15 school children, an attack that Western countries have blamed on the Syrian military and Russian air force. Moscow has denied involvement. </s> BEIRUT (AP) — The Latest on developments related to Syria (all times local):

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is condemning the bombing of rebel-held eastern Ghouta and also calling the situation in the northern Syrian district of Afrin unacceptable.

Merkel said in a speech to the German parliament Wednesday that it's important to address the reasons why people flee their countries and pointed to the situation in Syria.

She said that "for all of Turkey's justified security interests, what is going on in Afrin is unacceptable, with thousands of civilians being persecuted, dying or having to flee."

The U.N. children's agency said Tuesday some 100,000 people were trapped in rural areas of Afrin and in need of humanitarian aid after Turkish and allied Syrian forces drove out a Syrian Kurdish militia there

Syrian rescuers and a war monitor say an airstrike in the rebel-held province of Idlib in northwestern Syria has killed at least 13 people, most of them children.

The Syrian Civil Defense in Idlib says the airstrike hit children running from their school in Kfar Bateekh village because of the jets flying overhead, killing 11 of them. The rescuers said Russian jets were behind the attack.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrike killed at least eight children, adding that the number of those killed is likely to rise as rescuers are still looking for survivors under the rubble. The Observatory said it was not immediately clear who was behind the strikes.

Idlib is the largest area still controlled by insurgents in Syria.

Syria state media say the death toll from a rebel mortar assault on a market in Damascus has risen to 38, making it one of the deadliest attacks in the capital since the start of the seven-year civil war.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Wednesday put the death toll from the attack in Kashkol neighborhood even higher, at 43, including 11 pro-government fighters.

The government blamed the attack on rebels in the eastern suburbs, where Syrian troops backed by Russian warplanes have been waging a major offensive over the past month.

Videos of the aftermath of the attack posted online showed scenes of chaos, with people screaming and bodies and mannequins strewn across the ground.

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Suspected Syrian or Russian warplanes conduct airstrikes on a residential area and a school in Haas village in rebel-held Idlib Governorate, killing at least 26 civilians, most of them children.