Air strikes kill 16 in east Aleppo

Rebel areas hit by barrel bombs and Russian warplanes

BEIRUT // Air strikes and barrel bombs killed 16 civilians in rebel-held parts of Aleppo province yesterday, with rebel rocket fire on government areas killing three more.

The Britain- based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 10 civilians were killed in multiple air strikes on the rebel- held town of Atareb in Aleppo province.

The strikes in the early hours of the morning were believed to have been carried out by Russian warplanes, and hit several locations including a market, the Observatory said.

Russia is a key ally of the Syrian government and began air strikes in support of its forces in September last year.

Footage of the aftermath of the strikes showed the local civil defence unit trying to put out a fire in the rubble of one collapsed building.

In Aleppo city meanwhile, at least six civilians were killed in barrel bomb attacks by government forces on rebel-held neighbourhoods, the Observatory said. The monitor said the toll was expected to rise because of the number of people with injuries and the many still trapped under rubble.

At the scene of one of the attacks in Al Mashhad neighbourhood, civil defence workers were struggling to retrieve survivors who were trapped under heavy pieces of debris. Rescuers had managed to pull one boy alive from the rubble, but the rest of his family were dead and still trapped beneath the remains of a collapsed building.

The city has been divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since mid-2012.

In recent weeks, government forces seized parts of the final supply route into the city’s east, prompting food shortages and spiralling prices.

The Observatory said at least three civilians had been killed in rebel fire on western Aleppo yesterday.

Elsewhere, US-backed fighters in north Syria renewed an offer to ISIL militants in Manbij, saying that if they let civilians leave the besieged northern town then the extremists would be allowed to leave too and would not be attacked.

Yesterday’s offer by the SDF-linked Manbij Military Council came days after the extremists ignored an earlier offer to leave the town safely with just their “individual weapons”.