Syrian warplanes stage first airstrike under truce

Syrian warplanes bombed a building in a Damascus suburb on Saturday, killing at least eight people in the first airstrike since an internationally mediated cease-fire went into effect, activists said.

The attack came a day after car bombs and clashes left 151 dead, according to activist tallies, leaving the four-day truce that began Friday at the start of a major Muslim holiday in tatters.

The rapid unravelling of the effort to achieve even a temporary peace marked the latest setback to ending Syria’s civil war through diplomacy after months of failed efforts.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said eight people were killed and many others wounded in the airstrike in Arbeen, a suburb of the capital. The area also has witnessed heavy clashes and intense shelling.

An amateur video posted by activists online showed a building that was turned into a pile of rubble said to be from the airstrike. A lifeless hand stuck out from the debris. The videos appeared consistent with AP’s reporting in the area.

In the north, rebels and Kurdish neighbourhood guards fought a rare battle late Friday in the embattled city of Aleppo that left 30 people dead, activists said.

In all, 151 people were reported killed on Friday, including 11 in a car bomb in a residential area of Damascus, on par with the daily death tolls preceding the cease-fire.

Shelling and clashes resumed Saturday nationwide. A car bomb parked behind an Assyrian church near a military police compound and a military court went off Saturday killing five people in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour, according to the Observatory. Military forces that rushed to the site of the blast then came under rebel fire, and three soldiers were killed, it said.

State-run TV denied the blast caused any casualties. Nobody claimed responsibility, but the attack was similar to those staged in the past by a radical Islamic group fighting on the rebel side, Jabhat al-Nusra, which has rejected the cease-fire outright.

The Observatory also said 30 rebels and Kurdish gunmen were killed in clashes that broke out in Aleppo’s predominantly Kurdish neighbourhood of Ashrafieh late Friday. A Kurdish official put the death toll at 10 Kurds, but had no figures for the rebels.

Rebels made a push Thursday into largely Kurdish and Christian areas that had been relatively quiet during the three-month battle for Syria’s largest city.

Kurds say the rebels had pledged to stay out of their neighbourhoods. Kurdish groups have for the most part tried to steer a middle course in the conflict between the rebels and the regime of President Bashar alAssad.

Mohieddine Sheik Ali, head of the Kurdish Yekiti party, said the clashes broke out after rebels entered Ashrafieh, violating “a gentlemen’s agreement” not to go into Kurdish areas in Aleppo.