Week-long Aleppo air raids kill more than 300
More than 300 people have been killed in a week of air raids on the northern Syrian city of Aleppo and nearby towns by President Bashar al-Assad's forces, a monitoring group said on Monday.
Many of the casualties, who included scores of women and children, were killed by so-called barrel bombs dropped from helicopters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Syrian authorities say they are battling rebels who have controlled parts of Aleppo, Syria's biggest city, and most of the surrounding countryside for the past 18 months.
But human rights group have condemned the use of the improvised bombs - oil drums or cylinders which are packed with explosives and metal fragments, often rolled out of the aircraft cargo bay - as an indiscriminate form of bombardment.
Rami Abdulrahman, director of the British-based pro-opposition Observatory, said 87 children and 30 women were among the 301 people killed in the Aleppo air raids since Dec. 15.
Assad's forces have clawed back territory to the southeast of the city in recent weeks and have reasserted control over several Damascus suburbs in the build-up to planned peace talks next month aimed ending Syria's almost three-year-old conflict.
The army is thought unlikely to be able to recapture major parts of Aleppo before the talks in Switzerland start on Jan. 22, but Abdulrahman said the air raids might be aimed instead at turning the remaining residents against the rebel fighters by showing that the insurgents could not protect civilians.
The Observatory says that more than 125,000 people have been killed in Syria's civil war, which has also forced 2 million people to seek refuge abroad and driven more than a third of the country's 23 million people from their homes.
Human Rights Watch said in a report at the weekend that barrel bomb attacks in Aleppo had hit residential and shopping areas, describing the air raids as illegal.
"The Syrian air force is either criminally incompetent, doesn't care whether it kills scores of civilians, or deliberately targets civilian areas," HRW senior emergency researcher Ole Solvang said in the report.
Rebels also appeared to have violated international law by indiscriminately launching rockets and mortar bombs at civilian areas in the government-controlled part of Aleppo, HRW said.
It said on Dec. 4 they fired at least 10 surface-to-surface rockets into residential areas, killing at least 19 civilians.
On Monday alone, Syrian activists raised to 65 the death toll from airstrikes around a market area in the northern city of Aleppo the previous day.
The British-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights says mostly civilians were killed when government helicopters dumped explosives-laden barrel bombs around the Masaken Hanano market on Sunday.
It was one of the worst bombings in the Syrian military's nine-day air offensive against Aleppo and its surroundings.
Earlier, the Observatory said that 47 people were killed. The Observatory, which gathers information from a network of activists on the ground, said the death toll was raised after it was able to identify more victims.
Another activist group, the Aleppo Media Center, said Monday that 83 people were killed. Such conflicting figures are common in the aftermath of large bombings.
Meanwhile, Russia sent 25 armored trucks and 50 other vehicles to Syria to help transport toxins that are to be destroyed under an international agreement to rid the nation of its chemical arsenal, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Monday.
In a report to President Vladimir Putin, Shoigu said Russian aircraft delivered 50 Kamaz trucks and 25 Ural armored trucks to the Syrian port city of Latakia on Dec. 18-20 along with other equipment, state-run news agency RIA reported.
"The Defense Ministry has very swiftly implemented actions to deliver to Syria equipment and materiel to provide for the removal of Syrian chemical weapons and their destruction," Shoigu was quoted as saying.
Syria has agreed to abandon it chemical weapons under a deal proposed by Russia to avert potential U.S. military action after a deadly Aug. 21 sarin gas attack the United States blamed on President Bashar al-Assad's government.
Damascus agreed to transport the "most critical" chemicals, including around 20 tons of mustard nerve agent, out of the northern port of Latakia by Dec. 31 to be safely destroyed abroad away from the war zone.
Western powers has baulked at Syria's request for military transport equipment to transport chemical weapons material to Latakia because of concerns it could be used to fight Assad's opponents in the conflict or kill civilians.
Russia has been a major seller of conventional weapons to Syria and has given Assad crucial support during the conflict, blocking attempts to punish with sanctions and saying his exit must not be a precondition for a peace process.
Syrian government forces took control of a key highway connecting Damascus to the coast earlier this month, but the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has voiced concern the deadline could be missed.
AP/REUTERS