The United Nations is anxious to salvage the Geneva negotiations,
which are the most serious attempt to end the five-year-old civil war.
At least 60 killed in Aleppo violence in past three days, monitor says(Reuters)
At least 60 people have been killed in three days of fighting in Syria's northern city of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as violence continues to escalate.
Seven
children and 10 women were among those killed in a series of air
strikes by the government side and shelling attacks by insurgents since
Friday, the monitoring group said.
Fighting has
intensified in Syria in recent weeks, all but destroying a partial
ceasefire that took effect at the end of February. Last week, the main
opposition walked out of formal talks in Geneva.
Beginning
early on Friday, government warplanes bombed a number of rebel-held
parts of Aleppo, control of which is split between the warring sides.
The government air raids killed 45 people, the monitoring group said.
Insurgent
bombardments, including the use of home-made rockets and gas canisters
fired as shells, meanwhile killed 15 people on the government-held
western side.
The city was calmer on Monday but
shells were still being fired onto government-held areas, said the
British-based Observatory, which tracks the war using sources on the
ground.
Syria's foreign ministry said it sent a
letter to the U.N. Security Council to protest what it called terrorist
attacks on populated areas in Aleppo and Damascus on Saturday, the state
news agency SANA reported.
It said the shellings
violated the cessation of hostilities agreement brokered by the United
States and Russia, which took effect in western parts of the country in
February.
The United Nations is anxious to salvage
the Geneva negotiations, which are the most serious attempt to end the
five-year-old civil war.
The U.N. special envoy
for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has vowed to continue the fragile peace
talks despite the walkout by the opposition and signs that both sides
are gearing up to escalate the war, which has killed more than 250,000
people.
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