Syrian aircraft hit Aleppo, killing 15: Activists

Beirut: Syrian military aircraft targeted rebel-held districts in the northern city of Aleppo for the third straight day on Tuesday , killing at least 15 people, activists said.

The government` assault on the opposition`s northern stronghold comes just hours after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon demanded a cease-fire in the nearly 3-year-old conflict in which more than 120,000 people have been killed, according to activists. The airstrikes were the latest in President Bashar Assad`s air campaign aimed at driving the opposition out of Aleppo, Syria`s largest urban center and once the country`s commercial hub. The opposition has controlled parts of the city for more than a year. Government war planes bombed Aleppo`s rebel-held Shaar district today morning, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, said at least two children were among those who died in the attack. On Sunday, 76 people, including 28 children, died in air raids and the city was hit by another round of airstrikes yesterday. Ban told reporters in New York yesterday that the situation in Syria has "deteriorated beyond all imagination" and insisted that the fighting stop before political dialogue on Syria can start. Brokered by Russia and the United States, peace talks between the Syrian opposition and Assad`s government are scheduled to begin in January in Geneva. Meanwhile, plans were underway to organize a one-day meeting of foreign ministers in the Swiss city of Montreux ahead of the Syrian talks, UN officials said today. US Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and more than two dozen other foreign ministers would gather for a day-long meeting on January 22 at a Montreux hotel. The conference will break up for a day and then reconvene on January 24 for the start of actual negotiations between Syria`s warring sides, said Khawla Mattar, a spokeswoman for the UN`s special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi. Violence in Syria has surged in the past weeks as the warring sides try to claim or hold on to territory as a possible bargaining chip in the negotiations. Civilians continue to pay the highest price in the conflict after even the most modest attempts at peace have failed. Yesterday alone, at least 150 people were killed nation-wide, the Observatory said. Most of the casualties were reported in and around Syria`s largest cities, including in the capital, Damascus, Aleppo and the central city of Homs.