A Russian-declared ceasefire for opposition-held areas of Syria's second city Aleppo took effect on Friday, but hopes were low that civilians or rebels would heed calls to leave.
Syrian rebels renewed their bid to break a government siege on eastern Aleppo on Thursday, shelling regime-held parts of the city, hours before a brief Russian-declared ceasefire was due to begin.
An Australian bookshop owner was sentenced to 4.5 years in jail on Wednesday for sending money overseas to his brother who is fighting against the Syrian government.
Syrian rebels opened a new front in Aleppo as fighting spread on the third day of a major insurgent counter-attack to break the government's siege of the opposition-held part of the city, and each side accused the other using poison gas.
Syrian rebels launched a major assault Friday aimed at breaking a months-long siege of opposition-held districts of Aleppo, as regime ally Russia held off on renewed air strikes.
Syrian rebels launched Grad rockets at Aleppo's Nairab air base on Friday, part of their preparations for a new offensive aimed at breaking the government siege of insurgent-held areas of the city, a rebel official and a monitoring group said.
Shelling by Syrian rebels killed several children at a school in government-held western Aleppo on Thursday, state media and a monitoring group said, just a day after air strikes on a school in a rebel-held village in Idlib, 50km away.
The Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed suggestions from NATO that a Russian battle group in the Mediterranean would join the bombardment of Syria's Aleppo as absurd, the RIA news agency reported on Thursday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said air strikes killed at least 16 people in the Haas village in Syria's rebel-held Idlib province on Wednesday, six of them children.
A suspected Syrian army helicopter dropped barrel bombs on Turkish-backed rebels on Tuesday, the Turkish military said, in what appeared to be the first direct clash with Syrian forces since Turkey launched a cross-border incursion in August.
French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday urged the US-led coalition backing the offensive against Islamic State jihadists in Mosul to prepare for the aftermath of the city's fall, including returning fighters.
Nearly 100 civilians have been killed in a two-month offensive by Turkey and allied rebels in northern Syria, a monitoring group said on Monday.
