Hannah Lucinda Smith, Istanbul
Syrian rebels have targeted a hospital in a regime-held district of Aleppo as world leaders struggle to quell fierce fighting in the benighted city.
The reports were strenuously denied by rebel groups and some opposition activists, who accuse Assad’s forces of targeting the al-Dabit maternity hospital themselves in a bid to tarnish the opposition. Pro-opposition press reported that the blast was caused by a car bomb parked outside the hospital.
However, the London-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that the attack on the hospital was launched from a rebel-controlled area. Three women were killed and 17 people wounded in the hospital, according to pro-regime media. The SOHR reports that at least nineteen people in regime-controlled neighbourhoods died under rebel fire yesterday.
Renewed fighting flared in Aleppo two weeks ago as a ceasefire brokered in February crumbled. More than 350 people, many of them women and children, have been killed in the city since then, and medical facilities in the rebel-held quarters have come under repeated attack by Mr Assad’s forces.
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John Kerry, the US secretary of state, is scrambling to rebuild the truce in Geneva, but is meeting fierce resistance from Russia – a staunch Assad ally – who insist that the strikes on opposition areas are only targeting the al-Qaeda affiliated Nusra Front.
Earlier in the week Mr Kerry infuriated rebel groups when he said that he would put pressure on the mainstream opposition to separate itself from Nusra. His stance now appears to be hardening, however; on Tuesday he gave President Assad a deadline of August 1 to begin a political transition.
Meanwhile, Isis – which controls a large swathe of the countryside north of Aleppo – has continued to launch daily rocket attacks on the southern Turkish town of Kilis. The town is home to more than 130,000 Syrian refugees and has been turned into a powderkeg by the assaults, which have killed more than 20 people since January. Anti-Syrian riots have flared several times over the past month.
The rocket strikes appear to be part of a concerted campaign by Isis in retaliation for Turkey’s crackdown on the group at the frontier. Turkish forces are bombarding Isis positions with cross-border artillery strikes in a bid to dislodge them from the so-called Marea Line – a 60 mile stretch of border territory which is the jihadists’ last gateway into Syria.
Imams loyal to Isis in several Syrian cities made statements yesterday claiming that towns in southern Turkey are now the group’s main targets.