Airstrike on north Syrian jail kills scores

DAMASCUS: Activists reported that a Russian airstrike on a prison run by Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria of the country has killed at least 39.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 39 people were killed, including many fighters from the Nusra Front as well as detainees in the northwestern town of Maaret Al-Numan.
The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said the airstrike killed 51.
Conflicting figures are common in the aftermath of airstrikes in Syria.
The Observatory said the warplanes fired four missiles that hit the court that includes a jail as well as a nearby road linking the court with a market.
Meanwhile, the UN special envoy to Syria arrived in Damascus to lay the groundwork and prepare the peace negotiations between Bashar Assad’s government and its opponents due later this month in Geneva.
But Syrian opposition figures insist it’s impossible to talk peace when Syrian government forces are stepping up their attacks and laying siege to opposition-held areas that leave Syrians starving to death.
Separately, a spokesman said humanitarian groups could begin delivering much-needed aid in three besieged Syrian towns as early as Sunday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and UN World Food Programme (WFP) said they were preparing convoys packed with food and medical supplies for suffering populations in the towns of Madaya, Al-Foua and Kefraya. As Syria reels from civil war, a six-month-long blockade of Madaya by the Syrian Army and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, has trapped about 40,000 residents now enduring a harsh winter.
Further north, the villages of Al-Foua and Kefraya, in the Idlib governorate, are home to some 20,000 residents under siege by fighter groups.
Twenty-three people have died of starvation in Madaya since Dec. 1 at health centers supported by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the global medical aid group said.
Aid deliveries could start on Sunday or Monday as documentation is being prepared, said Pawel Krzysiek, a spokesman for the ICRC in Syria, speaking from Damascus.
The trips could be dangerous as the convoys cross battle lines, he said.
“Basically we’ll be crossing from the territory controlled by one side to the territory controlled by another,” Krzysiek said. “As you can imagine it is always a very, very sensitive operation.”
The first UN convoy could set off as early as Sunday, said WFP spokeswoman Abeer Etefa.
Urgently needed supplies include medicine and baby formula because mothers of infants are not lactating due of hunger, said Krzysiek.
The WFP will distribute such staples as rice, vegetable oil, flour, sugar, salt and canned food.
Blockades have been a common feature of the nearly five-year-old civil war that has killed an estimated 250,000 people, with government forces besieging fighter-held areas and militant groups blockading loyalist areas.
A UN Security Council resolution adopted on Dec. 18 setting out a road map for peace talks called on the parties to allow aid agencies unhindered access throughout Syria, particularly in besieged and hard-to-reach areas.
A newly formed opposition council set up to oversee negotiations has said aid must be delivered before talks that are planned for Jan. 25.