The Syrian Civil Defense Corps said that the first female volunteer in its rescue teams was killed in an Assad regime airstrikes on rural Idlib on Saturday.
The rescue group, also known as the White Helmets, announced that Sobhiya al-Sa’ad was killed along with members of her family when an airstrike hit their house in the town of Kafarsajna in rural Idlib.
The White Helmets aid group, which help victims of bombardment by regime forces and their allies, said that Sobhiya was the first female volunteer to be killed since the group was founded in 2013.
The civil defense won the 2016 Irish Tipperary International Peace Prize in recognition of the efforts the volunteer group are making to save civilians and help local communities in Syria.
The White Helmets first emerged in 2012 to help victims of the Assad regime attacks on civilian areas. The organization received several international awards and was nominated by foreign and Syrian activists for the 2016 Nobel Prize.
The volunteer group, which was officially founded in October 2014, has 150 centers distributed across all the liberated areas in Syria. It carries out search and rescue operations among the rubble of bombed buildings and extinguish fires caused by the Assad regime and its allies’ attacks. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)