Rockets Kill 18 in Govt-Held Areas of Syria's Aleppo
Rockets killed at least 18 people on Wednesday in regime-held areas of Syria's main northern city of Aleppo, a focal point of the 33-month conflict pitting loyalists against rebels.
On the political front, a Syrian minister said President Bashar Assad would remain president and lead any transition agreed upon at Geneva peace talks planned for next month, despite the opposition's demands he be excluded from the process.
The multiple rocket attack on the Furqan and Meridian districts of Aleppo, the country's pre-war commercial capital, also wounded at least 30 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
State television said at least 17 people were killed in what it described as an attack by "terrorists," the regime term for the rebels fighting to oust Assad.
Aleppo has been one of the main battlegrounds of the Syrian conflict since rebel fighters seized large swathes of the city in an offensive launched in July last year.
But despite persistent skirmishes between the loyalist and rebel forces, the front lines have changed little in more than a year, reflecting a stalemate across much of war-torn Syria.
The international community has become increasingly alarmed about the potential spillover into neighboring countries of the war that has killed an estimated 126,000 people since it erupted in March 2011.
And Wednesday's rocket attack came as Hizbullah said one of its top leaders was killed near Beirut at a time of soaring sectarian tensions in Lebanon over the conflict in its larger neighbor.
The Syrian conflict flared nearly three years ago with peaceful pro-democracy protests inspired by the Arab Spring but escalated into a full-scale civil war after Assad's regime launched a brutal crackdown.
Today hundreds of armed groups, including powerful jihadist brigades affiliated with al-Qaida, are battling both the regime and each other, complicating any efforts to reach a political settlement.
On Wednesday, Information Minister Omran al-Zohbi insisted Assad would remain president and lead any transition agreed at the Geneva talks scheduled for January 22.
"If anyone thinks we are going to Geneva 2 to hand the keys to Damascus over (to the opposition), they might as well not go," he said in remarks carried by the official SANA news agency.
The conference is envisioned as a follow-up to the Geneva 1 meeting of June 2012, at which the two sides agreed on the formation of a transitional government without specifying what role, if any, Assad would have in it.
The plan was never implemented.
The dispute over Assad's role, and the endemic divisions among both the external opposition and rebels battling on the ground, have cast doubt over whether the two sides can even reach an agreement let alone implement it.
Meanwhile, a Syrian government daily accused rebels of kidnapping a dozen nuns from a convent in the Christian town of Maalula, north of Damascus, to use them as "human shields".
The rebels took the Syrian and Lebanese nuns to a nearby area under their control after capturing the historic town on Monday, in a case that prompted Pope Francis to call Wednesday for prayers for them and others kidnapped in the conflict.
Source: Agence France Presse
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