News Digest

Activists say Syrian army strikes kill 70 people in Aleppo

Syrian army airstrikes killed at least 70 people, most of them civilians, and wounded scores in attacks Saturday in the northern province of Aleppo that struck civilian areas, including a packed market in a town held by the Islamic State group, activists said. The deaths occurred in two separate incidents when helicopters dropped explosives-filled barrels. One barrel hit the rebel-held Shaar neighborhood of the city of Aleppo, killing at least 12 people, most of them from the same family. The other attack was far deadlier, hitting a busy market known as Souk al-Hal in the Islamic State-held town of al-Bab in Aleppo’s countryside.

[It is] totally unacceptable that the Syrian air force attacks its own territory in an indiscriminate way, killing its own citizens, as it brutally happened today in Aleppo.

Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 59 people were killed and dozens wounded, calling it the one of the worst massacres perpetrated by President Bashar Assad’s army this year. It said the number of dead likely would rise because many of the wounded were in critical condition. Al-Bab is controlled by the Islamic State group, which also confirmed the attack in a statement posted on Twitter. The Syrian military has suffered a series of embarrassing setbacks in northern Syria recently as insurgents captured the city of Idlib and almost all of Idlib province. The Islamic State group has also pushed into central Syria, seizing the ancient city of Palmyra earlier this month after government forces fled the area.