Children Killed in Regime Barrel Bomb Attack Near School

At least seven people, including four children, were killed in a government barrel-bomb attack that struck near a school in the northern city of Aleppo, AP reports.

“The primary school students were playing in the courtyard when the barrel bomb hit,” said Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The strike hit the Saif al-Dawla neighborhood in Aleppo, a district where control is split between the regime and the opposition.

Barrel bombs, containers packed with explosives and projectiles that are dropped from helicopters, are often used on opposition-held territory in Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial hub but now divided between government and opposition forces for nearly three years.

Human Rights Watch has documented more than 1,000 barrel-bomb impact sites in the city since a resolution was passed in the U.N. Security Council calling for an end to their use in populated areas.

Many schools in Syria have closed due to the violence, including just last month when more than 100 schools in Aleppo had to close temporarily due to a regime air strike that killed five children and three teachers.

The Assad regime launched an offensive in February aimed at cutting a crucial rebel supply line inside the city and encircling opposition-held territory.

Last week, the rebels announced a new offensive to liberate Aleppo from the regime and have been known to conduct underground bombings near areas under regime control.

U.S.-led Airstrikes in Syria Allegedly Kill Dozens of Civilians

Airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State have killed dozens of people in northern Syria, with the death toll on Friday rising to 52 civilians in Aleppo, the New York Times reports.

The Observatory for Human Rights said the U.S.-led coalition strike hit the village of Bir Mahli, in Aleppo province, east of the Euphrates River, accidently killing seven children and nine women, adding that 13 people remained missing.

The London based-organization called the alleged killings a “massacre” committed under the “pretext” of targeting ISIS militants.

“We in SOHR condemn in the strongest terms this massacre committed by the U.S.-led coalition under the pretext of targeting the IS in the village,” the observatory’s statement said Saturday, “and we call the coalition countries to refer who committed this massacre to the courts, as we renew our calls to neutralize all civilians areas from military operations by all parties.”

The United States and allied countries have been carrying out almost daily airstrikes in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State group since September.

U.S. Central Command spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder told AFP there was “no information to corroborate allegations that coalition air strikes resulted in civilian casualties.”

According to the Observatory, the air campaign has killed more than 2,000 people in total, including at least 1,922 IS fighters and 66 civilians, prior to Friday’s attacks.

The Observatory also made a new allegation against the Assad regime on Sunday, reporting that at least 40 civilians, including children, suffered “respiratory problems” as a result of chlorine gas attacks on two rebel held villages in the northwestern Idlib province.

Outside the capital, meanwhile, regime forces cut the last main supply route for rebels leading out of Eastern Ghouta, the main opposition stronghold in Damascus province, which has been under a crippling government siege for nearly two years.

Syrian Peace Talks Kick Off in Geneva

Meetings between the United Nations and Syria’s opposition groups, government and international powers, including Iran, begin this week in the latest attempt to revive stalled negotiations to end the country’s four-year war.

In January Staffan de Mistura, the U.N.’s Special Envoy for Syria, said the conditions were not yet right to launch another set of talks after two previous rounds of negotiations had failed. However, the envoy was recently instructed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to “focus much more to re-launch a political process” after his attempt to broker a local truce in the northern city of Aleppo failed to materialize.

U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said that Staffan de Mistura had invited “as many of the parties as possible” to the consultations and that the envoy would hold separate in-depth consultations with each of the parties on the dire situation in Syria.

“Everybody involved in the Syria tragedy, whether they are regional players, whether they are neighbors, whether they are P5 members are invited. We are starting, the Special Envoy, of course, is starting with the Syrians, both government and opposition and will also be meeting the stakeholders I just mentioned, regional and international, separately, separately low key, low profile,” said Fawzi.

Last week the U.N. confirmed that Iran would be invited as a major player in the region with influence in Syria.

In January 2014, Ban invited Iran, a major ally of the Assad regime, to attend a round of Syria peace negotiations in Switzerland, then withdrew the invitation due to Iran’s lack of support for the Geneva communiqué.

Recommended Reads:

• NPR: In Syria, Signs That the Army is Losing Ground to Rebel Groups
• CNN: Syria’s Killer Diseases Don’t Know There’s a War: A Mother’s Tale
• Reuters: Suicide Bomber Blows Himself Up in Heart of Damascus – Army