Beirut: Activists and rescue workers say an intensive day of bombing on besieged rebel-held parts of Aleppo has left at least 25 people dead, including five children.
Rescue workers pulled at least one boy alive from under the rubble late Tuesday night. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says Wednesday that Tuesday's bombings killed 25 people. The Syrian Civil Defense, a team of first responders, and activist media platform Aleppo Media Center put the death toll at 41.
Ibrahim al-Haj, of the Civil Defense, says teams are continuing to search for survivors and bodies under a collapsed building in the al-Fardous neighborhood. He says the boy's mother is in critical condition.
Al-Haj says a bomb hit while rescuers were on the scene, injuring several of them.
The bombings resumed Wednesday.
Fighting on a number of fronts across the country has intensified in recent weeks following the collapse of a US and Russian-brokered cease-fire.
The northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest and its former commercial center, has seen particularly fierce fighting, as pro-government forces try to capture neighborhoods in besieged opposition-held parts of the city.
The activist-operated Aleppo Today TV station and Qasioun news agency say bunker-busting bombs were used in an attack on the Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood in rebel-held eastern Aleppo.
Other activist groups and a member of the Aleppo local council, Zakaria Amino, said rescue workers were searching for people under the rubble. Amino said bombs fell on a number of other rebel-held neighbourhoods.
The opposition-held part of Aleppo has been battered by an intensive aerial campaign since last month, when the truce collapsed after just a week. Syrian pro-government forces are also conducting a ground offensive into the rebel-held districts, advancing slowly in the north, east and south of the city.
In the southern city of Daraa, where the conflict began following anti-government protests in March 2011, rebels fired rockets at government-held areas. One hit a primary school, killing six people, among them five children, and wounding 18 students, according to state-run news agency SANA. It said some of the wounded are in serious condition.
SANA posted a photo of a boy carried on a stretcher, his grey trousers stained with blood and his bandaged right hand on his stomach. Another photo showed a boy and a girl inside what appeared to be a hospital with IV drips in their arms.
