A Syrian government air raid struck near a school in an opposition-held neighbourhood in the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday, killing at least nine people, including five children, activists said.
The Aleppo Media Centre and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the air raid hit the opposition-held Ansari neighbourhood. The bloodshed comes a day after rebel shelling and government airstrikes killed more than 30 people on both sides of the divided city, which is carved into government- and rebel-controlled areas.
The observatory said at least nine people were killed in Sunday’s airstrike, and warned that the tally could rise because many of the wounded were in critical condition. The Aleppo Media Centre put the death toll at 10 and said dozens of people were wounded.
Also Sunday, the head of the UN agency that supports Palestinians visited refugees from the embattled Palestinian camp of Yarmouk in Damascus. The Palestinians fled Yarmouk, where heavy fighting has raged since Islamic State militants stormed the district more than a week ago, for a nearby government-controlled area of the Syrian capital.
UNRWA chief Pierre Krahenbuhl met with some 120 Palestinians who have found temporary refuge at a school in the Tadamon neighbourhood.
“The conditions were very difficult,” said Rahaf Qadri, who left Yarmouk 10 days ago. “There was no food, and diseases have started to spread.”
Qadri said her husband is still in the camp, and has joined Palestinian factions trying to protect Yarmouk from the Islamic State incursion.
Another Yarmouk refugee, 50-year-old Mohammad al-Halabi, deplored the lack of food and electricity in the camp, and said the situation worsened with the attack by Islamic State fighters. “We saw some people being beheaded and heard gunshots to terrorize people,” al-Halabi said. “They warned us that unless we join them, our heads will be cut off. We refused and later the Palestinian factions came and we left with them,” he said.
