A Syrian missile killed at least 20 people in a rebel-held district of Aleppo yesterday, opposition activists said, as the army turns to longer-range weapons after losing bases in the country's second-largest city.
The use of what opposition activists said was a large missile of the same type as Russian-made Scuds against an Aleppo residential district came after rebels overran army bases over the past two months from which troops had fired artillery.
As the uprising against president Bashar al-Assad, now a civil war, nears its two-year mark, rebels also landed three mortar bombs in the rarely used presidential palace compound in the capital Damascus, opposition activists said yesterday.
The United Nations estimates 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict between largely Sunni Muslim rebels and Assad's supporters among his Alawite sect. - Reuters