Syrian airstrike

from running short of troops and supplies.

On Thursday, activists said rebels shot down a helicopter carrying food and supplies to the base, killing the pilot and three other soldiers.

In the northern city of Aleppo, a government air raid on the disputed Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood killed at least four people and wounded more than a dozen others, the Observatory said. It added that doctors treating the wounded said many showed symptoms of inhaling toxic gas, such as severe vomiting and irritation to the nose and eyes.

Both sides in the Syrian civil war have accused the other of using chemical weapons.

Syria has asked the UN to investigate an alleged chemical weapons attack by rebels in March on the village of Khan alAssal outside of Aleppo. The rebels blame regime forces.

Britain and France want the UN to investigate allegations of chemical weapons use in Khan al-Assal and another village, Ataybah, on March 19, as well as the central city of Homs on Dec. 23.

Syria has rejected UN SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon’s push to expand the UN probe to include those other villages.

The Syrian conflict began in March 2011 with largely peaceful protests but has since devolved into a civil war that the United Nations says has killed at least 70,000 people. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have sought refuge abroad, and millions more have fled their homes to try to find safety elsewhere inside Syria.

International efforts to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict have faltered.

UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is scheduled to address the UN Security Council on Thursday. Brahimi has not been able to make progress in his mission to push forward a peace plan for Syria first presented in June at an international conference in Geneva.

On Saturday, Syrian state-run daily AlThawra accused Brahimi of being a “false witness.” The daily said he had taken sides in the conflict and that his briefing “will not alleviate the suffering of Syrians.”

Brahimi angered the Syrian government in December by saying that the four-decade rule of the Assad family had gone on “too long.”

Meanwhike, four Italian journalists who had been held hostage in Syria for more than a week have been freed, Prime Minister Mario Monti said in a statement on Saturday.

The four — three freelancers and a reporter working for the Italian public broadcaster RAI — had been abducted early this month while out filming in northern Syria.

Monti’s statement did not provide any details of how they were released, only thanking those involved for professionalism that “has enabled a positive outcome of this affair, which was made all the more complicated by the extreme danger of the situation.”

The journalists were currently in Turkey, from where they were expected to leave for home shortly, a foreign min- istry official said.

“They are in Turkey right now,” a Turkish foreign ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity. “We are in touch with the Italian authorities, we will make sure they can return home as soon as possible.”

In February, an Italian citizen and two Russians kidnapped on December 12 in the west of Syria were freed as part of an exchange for militants.

Abductions for religious, political or purely financial reasons are becoming increasingly frequent in war-torn Syria.

Syria’s government on April 2 offered kidnappers an amnesty deal, giving them 15 days to hand over victims or face sentences ranging from life with hard labour to execution, if their victims were murdered or sexually abused.

Rebels in Aleppo in northern Syria severely tortured a 54-year-old Kurdish man who died after being thrown out onto the streets of the city’s embattled Sheikh Maqsud district, a watchdog said Friday.

Tortured

“Arab and Kurdish medical and political sources in Aleppo city have confirmed to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that Ibrahim Khalil died after being tortured by the Badr Martyrs’ battalion,” the Britain-based Observatory said.

Khalil was not a political activist, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

“Like dozens of others, he was arbitrarily detained and tortured by an armed group whose leaders have proven in the past to be nothing more than warlords, taking advantage of a security vacuum in areas no longer under regime control.”

Elsewhere, fierce battles raged in the northeastern city of Qamishli, a majority Kurdish town, pitting Islamist Al-Nusra Front fighters against regular troops of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The army also pounded rebel enclaves near Qamishli, and clashes took place at the city’s entrance and near its airport, the Observatory reported.

Regime troops pounded Tawq Melh and Tal Hamis in the majority Kurdish province of Hasakeh, also in the north, added the group which relies on a network of activists, doctors and lawyers on the ground for its information.

In eastern Damascus, at least eight people — among them four rebels — were killed in regime shelling of the district of Jubar.

Several mortar rounds meanwhile hit Barzeh in northern Damascus and AlHajar al-Aswad in the south, the Observatory said, referring to two flashpoint districts on the edges of the capital where rebel groups have set up cells.

According to a preliminary toll distrib- uted by the Observatory, at least 53 people were killed in violence across the country on Friday.

The United Nations says that more than 70,000 people have been killed in Syria’s conflict, which last month entered its third year.

Friday’s violence comes a day after at least 152 people were reported killed — 65 rebels, 45 civilians and 42 soldiers.

Elsewhere, British military scientists have found forensic evidence that chemical weapons have been used in the conflict in Syria, the Times newspaper reported on Saturday.

A soil sample thought to have been taken from an area close to Damascus and smuggled back to Britain has provided proof that “some kind of chemical weapon” had been fired, it quoted defence sources as saying.

The tests were carried out at the Ministry of Defence’s chemical and biological research establishment at Porton Down, it added in the front-page story.

Diplomats at the United Nations said on Thursday that Western Nations have “hard evidence” that chemical weapons have been used at least once in the Syrian war, without giving details.

The British team were unable to discern whether the weapons had been fired by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime or by the rebels fighting him, nor could they say if there had been widespread use, The Times said.

It cited an unnamed source as saying: “There have been some reports that it was just a strong riot-control agent but this is not the case — it’s something else, although it can’t definitively be said to be sarin nerve agent.”

The Ministry of Defence had no comment when contacted by AFP, although the Foreign Office said it was deeply concerned about the possible use of chemical weapons.

“We are deeply concerned about multiple reports alleging the use of chemical weapons in Syria,” a spokesman said.

“We have shared our concerns with the UN secretary general and fully support his decision to investigate.

“The use of chemical weapons would be a horrific crime. Those who order the use of chemical weapons, and those who participate in their use, will be brought to account.”

Assad’s government has asked the United Nations to investigate its claims that opposition rebels fired a chemical weapon shell in Aleppo province on March 19.

In response, the UN assembled a team of international experts, led by Ake Sellstrom of Sweden, in the region.

But Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem wrote to UN chief Ban Kimoon this week saying the government could not accept an inquiry that extended to claims against its own forces.

A team of United Nations-led experts is waiting in Cyprus for the go-ahead to investigate three previous allegations of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, including one the government said was a poison attack by rebels in Aleppo last month.

The government of President Bashar al-Assad has rejected demands by the opposition that the inspectors be sent to investigate cases in Homs and Damascus where rebels say government forces used chemical munitions.

Aleppo’s Sheikh Maqsoud district, where the two bombs were dropped on Saturday, is controlled by rebels. The Observatory distributed photos taken by opposition activists of remnants of what it said were the bombs.

It also sent photos of a dead woman and two children, who it said were both under two years old. None of the three had any visible injuries.

About 70,000 people have been killed in an uprising against four decades of Assad family rule that turned into a civil war after Assad’s forces suppressed protests and opposition members took up arms. Both sides have been accused by rights groups of war crimes.