Syrian airstrike kills at least 5 in Aleppo

BEIRUT: A Syrian government airstrike on a heavily contested neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo killed at least five people yesterday, while several mortar rounds slammed into a residential district in Damascus, leaving at least one person dead, activists and state media said.
Aleppo and Damascus — Syria’s two largest cities — are key fronts in civil war between President Bashar Assad and the rebels trying to overthrow his regime. Opposition fighters have managed to seize control of several neighborhoods in Aleppo since storming the city last summer, while the regime has largely kept the rebels at bay so far in Damascus, although opposition fighters control several suburbs of the capital and look increasingly capable of threatening the heart of the city — and Assad’s power.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the air raid yesterday hit Aleppo’s Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood, which rebels seized parts of last weekend after days of heavy fighting with regime troops.