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Air strikes kill 46, army advances in Aleppo

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ALEPPO: Suspected Russian air strikes killed at least 46 people in opposition-held parts of Syria on Sunday, a monitor said, as government forces advanced in fierce clashes with rebels in east Aleppo. Syria’s government is waging an offensive to recapture all of second city Aleppo, and it has so far captured more than 60 per cent of the eastern districts that fell to rebels in 2012. In Idlib province, in northwest Syria, at least 26 civilians were killed in suspected Russian strikes on the town of Kafr Nabel, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.


An eyewitness said that warplanes hit several places in the town, including a local market.


The Observatory says it determines whose planes carries out raids according to their type, location, flight patterns and the munitions involved.


The group said 18 people were also killed in suspected Russian strikes on the town of Maaret al Numan, where an AFP photographer saw rescue workers and residents trying to pull survivors from the rubble at a vegetable market.


The monitor reported two additional deaths, one in an earlier strike on Maaret al Numan and another in Al Naqir, also in Idlib.


And it said six civilians, four of them children, had been killed in a government barrel bomb attack on the town of Al Tamanah in the south of Idlib.


Russia is a staunch ally of President Bashar al Assad’s government and began a military intervention in support of Damascus in September 2015.


Moscow says it is targeting “terrorists” and has dismissed reports of civilian casualties in its strikes.


In Aleppo, government forces advanced against rebels in east Aleppo, taking two small neighbourhoods and pushing into a third, state media said.


The army and allied forces are nearly three weeks into an operation to recapture all of Syria’s second city, divided between regime and rebel forces since 2012.


Tens of thousands of civilians have fled the offensive, which has made steady gains and threatens to deal Syria’s opposition its worst defeat of the country’s five-year civil war.


State television said on Sunday evening that the army had captured the districts of Karm al Tahan and Myessar and advanced into the Qadi Askar neighbourhood.


The operation has already seen some 60 per cent of east Aleppo fall to the government, and rebels are increasingly under pressure in the remaining southeastern districts under their control.


State news agency SANA said the air force was dropping leaflets over rebel-held areas urging “militants to abandon their weapons and... allow civilians and the sick and wounded to leave.”


Damascus says rebels are preventing civilians from leaving the east and attempting to use them as human shields.


But tens of thousands of residents have poured out of eastern neighbourhoods as the army has advanced, with some heading south to remaining rebel territory and others going to areas under government or Kurdish control.


At least 311 civilians, including 42 children, have been killed in east Aleppo since the government began its assault, according to the Observatory.


The east has been pounded with air strikes, barrel bombs and artillery fire since the operation began. Rebel fire on west of Aleppo has killed 69 civilians, including 28 children, in the same period, the monitor says. — AFP


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