An airstrike reportedly killed dozens of people in a rebel-held town in Syria on Saturday as a UN envoy visited Damascus to advance preparations for peace talks planned this month.
Agreement was also reached for aid to be delivered today to an opposition-held town besieged by pro-government forces where the UN says there have been credible reports of people dying of starvation, sources said.
Aid was to be sent simultaneously to two villages blockaded by rebels.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 57 people were killed in the airstrike, which hit a courthouse and prison in the town of Maarat al-Numan in Idlib Province.
The rights group identified the jets as Russian and said the courthouse was operated by the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front.
Separately, al-Nusra Front stormed a radio station and abducted two prominent media activists from a rebel-held northwestern town yesterday, an opposition official told reporters.
“Al-Nusra Front kidnapped at 6:55am activists Hadi al-Abdallah and Raed Fares in the offices of Fresh FM where they work and live in Kafranbel,” Syrian National Coalition head of media Soner Taleb said.
Fresh FM director Raed Fares has previously been detained by al-Nusra fighters, who disapprove of what they term the station’s “secular tendency and support of apostates,” Taleb said.
In other news, aid desperately needed in three besieged towns in war-torn Syria could not be delivered before today, the Red Cross said, citing logistical problems.
Syria’s regime on Thursday agreed to allow aid into Madaya, a town of 42,000 that has been surrounded by the army for six months.
“The distribution of aid will not take place on Sunday [yesterday] for logistical reasons; we are working hard for it to take place on Monday [today],” International Committee of the Red Cross Damascus spokesman Pawel Krzysiek said.
Doctors Without Borders said that at least 23 people have starved to death since Dec. 1.
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