Syrian troops shell northern cities, 11 reportedly dead
Syrian government troops continue to pound the rebel-held Shaar district of Aleppo, killing 11 people, a rights group said, while 11 others, including seven rebels, were killed elsewhere in Syria’s northern city.
Syrian rebel fighter with missile launcher. Original subtitle in arabic, translated to: Photo of Sracb under bombardment and military address field free and Hospitals May photo/Freedom House via Flickr public domain
“Eleven civilians were killed, three of whose names have been documented, when the army shelled the district of Shaar,” the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement on Sunday.
A helicopter strike on Sunday on the town of Kafr Aweid in the northwest Syrian province of Idlib killed at least five
children and one woman.
Amateur videos are surfacing online revealing the bloody corpses, including one child, which reportedly prompts the cameraperson to say: “God curse you, O army.”
Meanwhile, the top commander of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard has said that the elite unit has high-level advisers in Lebanon and Syria but remains undecided on whether to send military reinforcements to help save Assad’s regime.
Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari’s comments mark the clearest indication of Iran’s direct assistance to its main Arab allies, Assad and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Jafari told reporters that Quds force members have been in Syria and Lebanon as advisers for a long time, but was not more specific.
He said decisions about whether to boost military aid to Syria if attacked would “depend on the circumstances”.
