Rebels struck after Syria alleges gas attack

DAMASCUS, Syria — Russian warplanes attacked rebel-held areas in northern Syria for the first time in weeks on Sunday, as Syrian officials said more than 100 people were treated at hospitals for a suspected poison gas attack in the northern city of Aleppo that Damascus and Moscow blamed on rebels.

The rebels, who have denied carrying out any poison gas attacks, accused the government of trying to undermine a truce reached by Russia and Turkey in September during a summit in the Russian city of Sochi. The targeted area is rebelheld and home to extremist groups opposed to the truce.

Russian military spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov told reporters in Moscow that Russian warplanes destroyed militant positions in northern Syria, blaming them for the alleged poison gas attack.

The latest wave of shelling and airstrikes in northern Syria is the most serious violation of a truce reached by Russia and Turkey that has brought relative calm to the country’s north for the last two months.

Russia is a close ally of President Bashar Assad and has intervened in recent years to turn the tide of the civil war in his favor.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Thiqa News Agency, an activist collective, said warplanes pounded rebel-held areas west and south of Aleppo city. The airstrikes were the first since the truce took effect Sept. 17.

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said the alleged chemical attack late Saturday was carried out by “terrorist groups positioned in Aleppo countryside” that fired shells containing toxic gases on three neighborhoods in Syria’s largest city. The Syrian government routinely calls rebel groups “terrorists.”

“According to preliminary data, particularly the symptoms shown by the victims, the shells that bombarded residential areas of Aleppo were filled with chlorine gas,” Konashenkov said.

Syria’s forensic medicine general director, Zaher Hajo, told AP that all but 15 of the 105 people who were treated have been discharged. He said two people who were in critical condition have improved.