Fierce fighting rages in Aleppo

DAMASCUS: At least 20 people were killed and 100 wounded on Monday in rocket fire on government-held parts of the city of Aleppo, Syrian state media said.
“The number of martyrs in the massacre carried out by terrorists in Aleppo has risen to 20 dead and more than 100 hurt,” state television said in a breaking news alert.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported the rocket fire, putting the toll at 13, including two children, and adding that it was expected to rise.
The group also said around 100 people were wounded, among them 20 children.
The Britain-based monitor said rebels had fired some 250 rockets at several districts in western Aleppo city in just four hours, causing massive damage including the collapse of an entire building.
State television broadcast gruesome footage of the wounded being brought into hospital.
One stretcher carried the body of an adult whose face was covered with blood, and a dead child, ghostly with white dust.
Once Syria’s economic powerhouse, Aleppo has been ravaged by the conflict that began with anti-government protests in March 2011, before spiralling into a civil war.
The city has been divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since shortly after fighting spread to it in mid-2012.
Regime forces regularly bombard the eastern side from the air, dropping crude barrel bombs that rights groups say are indiscriminate and can kill dozens of civilians at a time.
Rights groups have similarly criticised rebels for firing indiscriminately into civilian areas in western Aleppo. More than 230,000 people have been killed in Syria since March 2011, according to the Observatory.
The United Nations envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, is currently visiting Damascus to brief government officials on talks he has held on ways to end the conflict.
Ahead of his visit, his spokesman said he would raise the “unacceptable” use of barrel bombs by the regime.
Meanwhile, dozens of Syrian refugees poured into Turkey on Monday after Ankara reopened the border, fleeing intense fighting between Kurdish fighters and Jihadists in northern Syria.
The new flow of refugees came as Kurdish forces advance on the Syrian town of Tal Abyad, which is held by Islamic State (IS) Jihadists and lies just across the Turkish border.
Some 400 Syrians have been initially given permission to enter Turkey on Monday via the Akcakale border crossing, where at least 1,000 had been clustered behind barbed wire, an AFP photographer said.
In the last week approximately 16,000 people have fled into Turkey to escape the fighting, but the border has been closed sporadically, with Ankara saying it would only allow refugees into the country in the event of a humanitarian tragedy.
Turkish authorities closed the border on Sunday after allowing in at least 3,000 people, leaving thousands of people stranded, with many spending the night outside the fence in the open.
“If Turkey accepts a new wave of refugees from Tal Abyad, it means that Turkey should be prepared for an influx of at least 100,000 refugees,” Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said on Monday.
“We are of the opinion that there isn’t a humanitarian crisis in Tal Abyad, similar to Kobane or other regions in Syria,” he told private CNN-Turk television.
The Kurdish forces aim to wrest control of Tel Abyad — opposite Akcakale — in order to free up passage from Kobane, on the Turkish frontier, to Qamishli which is close to the Iraqi border.
Formerly an ally of Damascus, Ankara broke off its relationship with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad as a 2011 uprising escalated from peaceful demonstrations to a bloody civil war.
The Turkish government said in April it has spent almost $5.5 billion to provide for Syrian refugees.
Under an “open-door” policy championed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has taken in 1.8 million Syrian refugees since the conflict in Syria erupted in 2011.