Shelling, airstrikes raise death toll in Syrian city

BEIRUT -- Overnight shelling and more than a dozen airstrikes on rebel-held parts of the Syrian city of Aleppo killed at least 11 people, raising the death toll over the past three days in the embattled city to at least 65, activists said Thursday.

Meanwhile, rebel shelling of government-held areas in the divided city killed two girls at a school. The airstrikes came a day after an air raid hit eastern Aleppo's biggest market, killing at least 15 people and leveling buildings.

Aleppo's unabating violence has given additional urgency to a meeting Saturday between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on efforts to find a peace deal for Syria during a session in Switzerland. It will be the first face-to-face contact between the two men since Washington broke off bilateral diplomatic contact with Moscow on Syria over the violence in Aleppo earlier this month.

In other developments in Syria's multilayered conflict, two Iraqi militia commanders said Thursday that they have started withdrawing some of their elite forces from Syria, where they are fighting on the side of President Bashar Assad's government, to Iraq in preparation for the battle to retake the city of Mosul from the Islamic State group.

The battle for Mosul is expected to be the most complex yet for Iraqi forces, backed by U.S.-led coalition air power. Since Mosul first fell to the Islamic State in June 2014, the extremists have been pushed from more than half of the territory they once held in Iraq, according to figures released by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's office.

Iraqi Shiite militias are not expected to take part in the operation, although they are likely to be part of the offensive to capture areas nearby such as the town of Tal Afar, which used to have a large Shiite population.

The two commanders, from Iraq's powerful Asaib Ahl Haq and Kataib Hezbollah militias, said more than 2,000 of their fighters have been withdrawn from Syria, mostly from in and around Aleppo, for redeployment near Mosul and the Islamic State stronghold of Hawija. The two spoke in Baghdad on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss military tactics.

But two Syrian opposition activists -- Rami Abdurrahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Turkey-based Ahmad al-Ahmad -- said they were unaware of the withdrawal, adding that Iraqi Shiite militias recently have sent reinforcements to Syrian government forces in the Aleppo area.

Earlier this month, an official with the Iraqi Shiite al-Nujaba militia said it sent about 4,000 fighters to Syria, also to the Aleppo area. The two Iraqi commanders said the al-Nujaba militiamen were not part of the pullout. The militia's leader, Sheikh Akram al-Kaabi, recently visited his fighters on Aleppo's front lines, vowing to continue to fight Sunni extremists.

According to the Observatory, more than 20 airstrikes overnight and into Thursday in eastern Aleppo killed seven people while shelling killed four. The activist group also said that clashes were taking place between government forces and rebels on the city's northern edge. The Halab Today TV channel reported "intense" airstrikes on rebel-held parts of Aleppo, adding that cluster bombs were being dropped.

Ibrahim Alhaj, a member of the Syrian Civil Defense, gave a higher toll, saying the airstrikes killed 13 and wounded 25. He said some people remained buried under the rubble and rescue and search operations were underway.

Syrian state media outlets said two girls were killed and five were wounded in rebel shelling that hit a school in Aleppo's western government-held neighborhood of Suleimaniyah.

The Observatory said Wednesday that at least 358 civilians have been killed in eastern Aleppo since a U.S.- and Russian-brokered truce collapsed on Sept. 19. The United Nations says more than 100 children have been killed in the campaign, which also has included a limited ground offensive.

Syrian government forces have encircled the eastern half of Aleppo, besieging more than 250,000 people. The siege has caused an international outcry with a number of countries and groups accusing Syria and Russia of war crimes in connection with attacks on medical facilities and aid convoys.

In an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Russian media outlet, Assad said a military victory in Aleppo would provide the Syrian army a springboard from which to liberate other areas of the country from "terrorists."

"It's going to be the springboard, as a big city, to move to other areas, to liberate other areas from the terrorists. This is the importance of Aleppo now," Assad said. "You have to keep cleaning this area and to push the terrorists to Turkey to go back to where they come from, or to kill them. There's no other option. But Aleppo is going to be a very important springboard to do this move."

Assad also said Saudi Arabia has offered to help his government if it agrees to cut ties with Iran, one of Syria's main allies.

He said the Saudis told him: "If you move away from Iran and you announce that you disconnect all kinds of relations with Iran, we're going to help you. Very simple and very straight to the point."

Information for this article was contributed by Vladimir Isachenkov, Philip Issa and staff members of The Associated Press.

A Section on 10/14/2016

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