ALEPPO, Syria
At least 71 people, including eight children and seven women, were killed on Friday in air and ground operations across Syria carried out by President Bashar al-Assad's forces, according to opposition activists.
At least 40 people were killed in Aleppo, 11 in Idlib, 10 people in the suburb of Damascus, three each in Homs, Deraa and Hama and one in Deir ez-Zor, the London-based watchdog Syrian Network for Human Rights said.
According to the Syrian Local Coordination Committee (LCC), numerous houses were demolished or damaged as army helicopters dropped barrel bombs on areas under opposition control in Aleppo.
Meanwhile, the Syrian government's official news agency SANA said security forces had "neutralized" a large number of armed groups, damaged many vehicles and obtained a large number of weapons belonging to the opposition during the operations conducted by the army in Aleppo, Idlib, Hama and Homs.
More than 100,000 people have been killed during the ongoing three-year conflict in Syria, which has also internally displaced more than 6.5 million people, according to the U.N. Over two million Syrians are now registered as refugees in neighboring Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.
www.aa.com.tr/en
