DPA/Cairo

At least 36 people, including 15 children, were killed yesterday in a series of air strikes by Syrian government troops in the northern city of Aleppo, an opposition watchdog reported.
Government helicopters dropped explosive-filled barrels on rebel-held residential areas in Aleppo, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Activists posted footage on the Internet showing burnt-out cars and destroyed buildings allegedly in the aftermath of the attacks.
Syrian state television said the army had carried out operations in Aleppo, eliminating what it called “full groups of armed terrorists”, a term it uses to refer to opposition forces.
Aleppo, Syria’s biggest commercial hub, has been at the centre of fighting in recent months between regime troops and rebels battling to oust President Bashar al-Assad.
In Adra, between Damascus and the strategic Qalamoun region to the north, the Observatory said it had documented the killing of 32 civilians in an attack on Wednesday by an Al Qaeda branch, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The dead, mostly Alawites, a Shia Muslim sect to which Assad belongs, included at least two children, the watchdog said.
Government forces backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters have been locked in a struggle with rebels for Qalamoun since mid-November.
The area spans the main highway connecting Damascus to government-held Homs in central Syria and regime strongholds on the coast. It also holds rebel supply lines across the border into neighbouring Lebanon.
Meanwhile, UN agencies carried out the first airlift of humanitarian supplies into the country’s largely Kurdish northeast, having been unable to reach the area by road for months because of security concerns.
Two planes chartered by the World Food Programme (WFP) and other agencies landed in Qamishli, each carrying more than 36 tonnes of food and other aid from Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurdish Welati news site reported.
The WFP said it planned to carry out 10 more flights in the coming days, providing “enough food to feed over 30,000 people for one month”.
The flights, delayed for days because of a storm that covered the region in snow, also carried winter supplies and health and sanitation kits.
Access to the northeast has been difficult because of fighting between Kurdish forces and Islamist rebels.
“Our food assistance is reaching displaced families in 13 governorates in Syria except for [north-eastern] al-Hassakeh, which we have not been able to reach consistently for over five months now due to insecurity on the roads,” said Matthew Hollingworth, the WFP’s country director in Syria.
“We cannot leave these victims of war hungry in one of the harshest winter months of the year in Syria,” he said.