19 civilians killed in raids on Syria's rebel east Aleppo

PanARMENIAN.Net - Air raids on two rebel-held districts of Syria's battleground second city Aleppo on Tuesday, August 16 killed 19 civilians, including three children, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes were carried out by either Russian or regime aircraft and that dozens of people were also wounded, some of them critically, in Tariq al-Bab and Al-Sakhur neighborhoods.

An AFP correspondent in eastern districts of Aleppo said there were heavy air strikes throughout Monday night and into the day on Tuesday on both those districts.

The Britain-based Observatory also said that 12 rebels were killed in Russian air strikes Tuesday targeting a convoy of anti-regime fighters on the city's southern outskirts.

The monitoring group's head, Rami Abdel Rahman, said the convoy was travelling into Aleppo via the Ramussa road, the access route rebels opened in early August into parts of the city they control.

That road has been used to bring in vegetables, gasoline and other goods into eastern Aleppo, marking the end of a three-week government siege of those districts.

Rebels, Islamists and jihadists are locked in clashes with regime forces on the southern edges of Aleppo in a bid to keep the route open.

The Observatory -- which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information -- says it determines what planes carried out raids according to their type, location, flight patterns and the munitions involved.

More that 290,000 people have been killed since Syria's conflict erupted in March 2011 with anti-government protests that morphed into a brutal multi-front war.