Regime attacks kill 27 civilians in Syria

By Mohamed Misto

ALEPPO, Syria (AA) – At least 27 civilians were killed Monday by Syrian regime airstrikes on opposition-held areas in Aleppo and Rif Dimashq provinces, according to a local civil defense official.

Ibrahim Abu Laith told Anadolu Agency that regime warplanes dropped barrel bombs on residential areas in Aleppo city’s al-Mashhad neighborhood.

“Twenty civilians were killed and 25 others injured in the attack,” he said.

According to Abu Laith, five families are still trapped under the rubble.

“Rescuers are struggling to extract them from under the debris,” he said.

Regime planes also struck a storehouse in Aleppo, which has been reeling under a crippling siege by the Syrian regime for the past two weeks, according to local sources who spoke anonymously due to security concerns.

Meanwhile, seven people were killed and 40 others injured by regime shelling of Eastern Ghouta district in Rif Dimashq province east of Damascus.

“The shelling has caused a massive trail of destruction,” a local civil defense source, who preferred to be unnamed due to security concerns, said.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests -- which erupted as part of that year’s "Arab Spring" uprisings -- with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to the UN.

The Syrian Center for Policy Research, however, has put the death toll from the five-year conflict at more than 470,000.