Eleven Syrian soldiers were killed on Saturday in fighting and rebel attacks on checkpoints in Aleppo province, as shelling killed five members of the same family, monitors said.
The soldiers and five rebels were killed in fierce clashes in the Orm and Kaf Jum areas, near the border with Turkey, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. A woman also died in shelling as rebels attacked checkpoints in Abezmo.
“The state has no presence except for military and administrative posts” in the western region of the province in northern Syria, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said by telephone.
He said the regime was determined to prevent rebels linking up between western Aleppo and the neighbouring province of Idlib as this would form an extensive insurgent region on the border with Turkey, which supports the revolt in Syria.
In shelling of several rebel-held district of Aleppo city, five members of the same family, including children, were killed in Maysar, said Abdel Rahman, whose Britain-based monitoring group relies on a network of activists on the ground.
The Old City of Aleppo, however, deserted of civilians but with a frontline running across it, was being spared air raids, an AFP correspondent in Syria’s commercial capital said.