REPORT: Death toll from airstrikes on Syria's Aleppo reaches at least 42

Syrian aircraft pummeled an opposition neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday, killing at least 42 people and extending the government's furious aerial bombardment of the rebel-held half of the divided city to an eighth consecutive day.

Since it began on Dec. 15, the government's unusually heavy air campaign in Aleppo has killed more than 200 people, smashed residential buildings and overwhelmed the city's hospitals with casualties. The timing of the assault a month ahead of planned peace talks in Switzerland suggests that Syrian President Bashar Assad could be trying to strengthen his position and expose the opposition's weaknesses before sitting down at the negotiating table.

Sunday's air raids targeted Aleppo's Masaken Hanano neighborhood, hitting a second-hand market, a two-story building and a main road, activists said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 42 people were killed. Observatory director Rami Abdurrahman said the death toll could rise because 17 of the wounded were in critical condition.

Another activist group, the Aleppo Media Center, put the death toll at 32, and published a list of the names of the dead on its Facebook page.

Activists said the airstrikes were carried out by government helicopters that dropped so-called barrel bombs, crude devices filled with explosives and fuel that are wildly inaccurate but cause massive damage on impact.

Human rights groups warn that even if Syrian forces are targeting rebels with the bombs, they often explode in residential areas, killing civilians.

In an amateur video posted online, a man held up to the camera a severed foot from the air raids, while crowds scrambled among rubble, hoarsely shouting "God is Great!" as they came across corpses. Flames and dust from the smashed building and cars darkened the sky. One man rhythmically smashed a hammer against a jammed door of a vehicle containing charred bodies.

The videos appeared genuine and corresponded with other Associated Press reporting of the events depicted.

In the town of Marea outside Aleppo, a barrel bomb that exploded near a school used by Syrian fleeing fighting in other areas killed three members of the same family, according to Abu Faisal and the Observatory.

Syrian officials have not commented on the air raids in Aleppo, the country's largest city, and a major front in the war since the rebels launched an offensive there in mid-2012. The city has been carved into opposition- and government-held areas.

Syria's civil war, now into its third year, has killed more than 120,000 people, according to activists. Millions have fled their homes because of the fighting.

In central Syria, a suicide bomber blew himself up near a primary school in the predominantly Shiite town of Umm al-Amed in Homs province, killing at least 12 people, half of them children, the Observatory said.

Syrian state media said eight people were killed, and said 34 were wounded, mostly children. It wasn't immediately possible to reconcile the conflicting tolls.        The bombing underscores how Syria's civil war, now in its third year, has become more sectarian.

Syria's rebels are mainly Sunni, with hard-line brigades emerging as the most powerful fighting groups. Shiites and other Syrian minority groups have either stayed neutral or sided with President Bashar Assad, fearing for their future should the rebels prevail. Groups on both sides have targeted civilians.

Also Sunday, Syrian military aircraft bombed Bab al-Hawa, a border crossing to Turkey, said a private Turkish news agency, Dogan, and the Aleppo Media Center and the Local Coordinating Committees, two activist networks.

The news agency said the bombs hit the Syrian side of the crossing, killing or wounding several people, and that several ambulances from the Turkish town of Reyhanli were heading to the border gate to carry the wounded to hospitals. It was not immediately clear why the area was targeted.

On another note, the body of a British doctor who died while in government custody in Syria has been returned to the UK for a post-mortem examination.       

Abbas Khan, a surgeon from London, died just days before he was apparently due to be released from Syrian government detention. His family says the Syrian government is responsible for his death, and a senior British official has also said Khan was "in effect, murdered."

Syrian authorities say the doctor committed suicide a notion the family rejects.

The 32-year-old was captured in November last year after he entered Syria to work in a hospital.       

A lawyer for Khan's family said the doctor's body was to be transported to a coroner's court in London on Sunday for a post-mortem. 


AP

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