Smoke is rising near the government controlled New-Aleppo-neighborhood in the Western part of Aleppo city, as Syrian rebels alongside al-Qaeda linked militants stepped up a week-long offensive on government held areas, detonating car bombs and firing shells, which the United Nations said killed dozens of civilians. During one of the rebel attacks, A senior medic in government-held Aleppo said that eight people had been brought into hospitals suffering from breathing difficulties thought to be from a poisonous gas attack. This could not be independently confirmed.
Meanwhile, airstrikes by warplanes killed at least 10 people in Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province, with videos uploaded to social media purported to show parachute bombs striking villages in the province. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrikes targeted the headquarters of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, an al-Qaeda linked group formerly known as the Nusra Front, killing two of their members but also claiming the lives of ten civilians including a child and four women who were in the compound at the time of the strike. Idlib, which is in northwest Syria near Aleppo, contains the largest populated area controlled by rebels – both nationalist groups under the banner of the Free Syrian Army which is Western-backed and Islamist fighters affiliated to Al-Qaeda.