Aleppo’s Kurdish district bombed: 18 civilians dead, 70 wounded

The dead include a pregnant woman and three children. Rebel group behind attack on the Kurdish Sheik Maksoud district; at least 50 thousand people living in the area. In clashes between extremist groups in Idlib a Nusra Front militiaman, famous for having eaten the heart of a Syrian soldier, is killed. Diplomatic efforts redoubled ahead of the new round of indirect talks in Geneva.

Damascus (AsiaNews / Agencies) – At least  18 civilians, including a pregnant woman and three children, have been killed in a rebel attack on a Kurdish district of Aleppo, in northern Syria, in violation of the cease-fire effective from 27 February.

According to sources reporting to the London based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,  70 people, including thirty children, were seriously injured in the attack on 5 April.

The bombing of the Kurdish Sheik Maksoud district in Aleppo, a buffer zone between the two sides (the one controlled by the government and the other by the rebels) and is home to at least 50 thousand people, continued throughout the day yesterday.

The attack was started by the opposition movements, among which there is also the Islamic extremist group Ahrar al-Cham, an ally of the Nusra Front (Al-Qaeda in Syria).

The leadership of al Nusra Front have also confirmed the death of one of their fighters who appeared in 2013 in a bloody video in which he cut to pieces the heart of a Syrian army soldier and then ate it. Known by his nom de guerre, Abu Sakkar he was killed by a rival rebel group during a gun battle in the northwestern province of Idlib. According to experts, his death was a settling of scores between the Nusra Front, which controls much of the territory of Idlib, and other Islamic extremist groups active in the area.

Meanwhile, the continuing diplomatic efforts are being redoubled ahead of the new session of "indirect" talks in Geneva (Switzerland) between representatives of the government and the opposition, scheduled from April 10 under the aegis of the United Nations.

Riad Hassan Agha, spokesman of the High Committee for Negotiations (HCN), the opposition front backed by Saudi Arabia and the West, emphasizes that the next session should focus on the future of President Bashar al Assad. "If negotiations ignore the fate of Assad [the rebels want to drive him from the Syrian political scene, ed], they will be just a waste of time." The opposition spokesman also says he is "not very optimistic" on the eve of the meetings.

The objective of the negotiations is to find a political solution to end a conflict that first broke out in March 2011 and that, in five years, has caused 260 thousand victims and given rise to a humanitarian crisis without precedent, with millions of refugees.

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