AIRSTRIKES FROM BOTH SIDES HIT ALEPPO
DAMASCUS Airstrikes and shelling pounded Aleppo for the third straight day Sunday, killing two young siblings and at least 24 others in Syria’s largest city and former commercial capital.
The northern city has been bitterly contested between insurgents and government forces since 2012.
Opposition groups control the eastern part of the city but have come under intense strain as the government has choked off all routes to the area except a narrow and perilous passage to the northwest.
At least 10 people were killed by rebel shelling on government-held areas in the city, according to activists and Syria’s state news agency, SANA.
Rockets struck schools and residential areas, SANA reported.
Airstrikes on the opposition side of the city killed 16, including a mother and her daughter, the Observatory said.
A video posted on social media by the Syrian Civil Defence first responder group, known as the White Helmets and which operates in opposition-held areas, suggests some of the strikes hit a market, with footage showing overturned vegetable carts strewn among the wreckage.
The opposition High Negotiations Committee, which suspended its formal participation in peace talks with the government in Geneva last week, called the strikes “an attack on the Geneva process that is the only possible pathway to peace.”