BEIRUT: Six civilians including several children were among 19 people killed on Thursday in the fiercest clashes to rock Syria’s Daraa province since it was captured by the government, a war monitor said. Artillery shelling by regime forces on the village of Al-Yadudah, northwest of Daraa city, killed a woman, her child and three other youngsters, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Regime artillery fire also killed a sixth civilian in the district of Daraa Al-Balad further south, according to the Observatory. The deaths bring the toll for Thursday’s clashes to a total of 19 across the province, which is located in southern Syria. The figure includes at least eight Syrian regime fighters and five gunmen affiliated with former opposition groups, the monitor said. The Russian-backed Syrian army and allied forces recaptured Daraa from rebels in 2018, a symbolic blow to the anti-government uprising born there in 2011. State institutions have returned but the army still has not deployed across the whole province, and tit-for-tat bombings and assassinations between former opposition figures and regime forces have since become routine. Tensions flared on Thursday, leading to the “most violent and broadest clashes in Daraa since it came under regime control.” The fighting started when regime forces fired artillery shells toward the former opposition hub of Daraa Al-Balad in tandem with a ground push, the observatory said. In response, gunmen launched a counterattack across many parts of the Daraa countryside, where they seized several regime positions and captured over 40 regime fighters.