Rockets fired into a government-controlled district of Aleppo killed at least 17 people in the northern Syrian city on Wednesday, state media and a monitoring group said.
Photographs from the incident in Meridien and Furqan, two adjacent neighborhoods in western Aleppo, showed pools of blood on the pavements and a crater in the road where one of the rockets appeared to have landed.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the casualties included nine civilians and five members of President Bashar al-Assad's security forces.
It put the death toll at 18, one more than was reported by state news agency SANA which called the rocket fire a "terrorist attack ...on residential districts" of the disputed city.
Assad's forces have gained ground to the southwest of Aleppo and carried out air strikes, dropping improvised barrel bombs from helicopters on the town of al-Bab to the northeast.
There has also been a resurgence of fighting in central Aleppo - the heart of what used to be Syria's biggest city - before next month's planned peace talks in Geneva.
Assad's government and the political opposition in exile have said they are ready to attend the talks, but have set out apparently irreconcilable goals.
The opposition says Assad can play no role in Syria's future and must hand over to a fully empowered transitional government - demands it says were set out in an earlier international meeting in the Swiss city in June last year.
But Assad, bolstered by military gains and backed by Iran and Russia, faces far less pressure to make concessions than a year ago, when a rebel assault on his capital seemed likely.
"If anyone thinks we are going to Geneva 2 to hand over the keys to Damascus they needn't bother going," Information Minister Omran Zoabi told the regional broadcaster Al Mayadeen.
"And if anyone thinks that the delegation going to Geneva 2 is authorised by anyone other than President Bashar al-Assad, they are mistaken," Zoabi said.
"The decision is President Assad's and he will be the leader in the transitional phase - if we get there... and he will remain Syrian president."
Pope Francis:
Pope Francis called for prayers for 12 Orthodox Christian nuns who were abducted from their convent by Syrian opposition fighters.
Francis made the appeal at the end of his general audience Wednesday. He said: "I invite everyone to pray for the sisters of the Greek Orthodox monastery of Santa Takla in Maaloula, Syria, who were taken by force by armed men two days ago."
He added: "Let us continue to pray and to work together for peace."
The abduction has added to fears that hardline Muslim rebels trying to overthrow President Bashar Assad were increasingly targeting Christians.
Syria's minorities, including Christians, have mostly sided with Assad or remained neutral in Syria's civil war, fearing for their fate if the rebels, increasingly dominated by Islamic extremists, come to power.
SNC:
The biggest Syrian opposition group in exile, Syrian National Coalition (SNC) denied claims on Tuesday that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) had kidnapped a group of nuns in western Syria.
SNC spokesman Khaled Saleh told the Associated Press that an FSA brigade entered into the city of Maaloula on Monday, went to a church where the nuns lived, and asked them to leave because government forces were shelling the area.
However, he said the nuns refused to leave the church and so were left there.
He said that another group that is "not affiliated with the Supreme Military Council, not affiliated with the FSA" told the nuns: 'Listen, the Assad forces are going to come, they are going to kill you and we are going to be blamed for you being killed so you really have to leave'."
Saleh said he was getting his information from the Supreme Military Council, the armed wing of the Syrian National Coalition fighting to topple the Assad government inside Syria.
On Monday, rebel forces captured large parts of Maaloula, which is some 60 kilometres (40 miles) northeast of the capital, Damascus, after three days of fighting.
Alleged Syrian agent:
German prosecutors have filed espionage charges against a man accused of spying on exiled dissidents for Syrian intelligence.
Federal prosecutors said Wednesday that the 59-year-old, a German-Syrian dual national identified only as Hassan A. in line with German privacy rules, is accused of spying on Syrian opposition supporters in Berlin from November 2011 to February 2012.
They say he reported several times every month to a Syrian man, Akram O., who was convicted of spying last December and sentenced to more than three years in prison.
Prosecutors earlier this year charged another suspect, a Lebanese-German dual national, with spying for the convicted agent on exiled dissidents.
REUTERS/AP