BEIRUT: At least 21 people were killed and around 100 wounded overnight when Syrian government war planes bombed a town in northern Syria controlled by Islamic State militants.
The attack came hours before a United Nations mediator met senior Syrian officials in Damascus to discuss ways to ease the war, which has entered its fourth year, killed around 200,000 people and since September drawn in the United States and allies in air strikes against the Islamic State.
The government of President Bashar Al Assad has stepped up its campaign against Islamic State and other enemies in the weeks since US-led strikes began.
Fighting between Assad’s government and rebels has intensified across northern Syria in recent days in areas close to the Turkish border in and around the northern city of Aleppo and in the Damascus countryside close to Lebanon.
Syrian helicopters dropped “barrel bombs” — steel drums full of shrapnel and explosives — while warplanes launched strikes on Al Bab town northeast of Aleppo, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
One of the 21 killed was a child and the death count was expected to rise as some of the wounded were in a serious condition, said the Observatory. At four least strikes by the US-led coalition hit Kobane yesterday.
In Damascus, UN envoy Staffan de Mistura met with Foreign Minister Walid Al Muallem and other government officials. They talked about de Mistura’s address to the UN Security Council last month in which he proposed an “action plan” of implementing some local ceasefires, SANA added.
Reuters
