50 civilians killed in Aleppo as blackout continues for second week

Syria's Aleppo has been hit by a power cut for seven consecutive days, a monitoring group said Friday, the day after some 50 civilians were killed in air raids there.

Regime-controlled areas of the city and countryside "have been deprived of electricity for seven days, after the (rebel) Islamic court ordered high-tension power lines be cut off as a way to put pressure on the regime," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

That sabotage was also aimed at trying to stop the air force from dropping barrel bombs on Aleppo, the Britain-based group said.

Hundreds of people, mainly civilians, have been killed in a massive aerial offensive against rebel-controlled areas of Aleppo that was launched in mid-December.

On Thursday alone, at least 48 people, including seven children, were killed across Aleppo province.

Thirty of them were killed in an air raid on the market area of Atareb village, said the Observatory, updating an earlier toll.

Elsewhere, fresh fighting broke out in the southern province of Daraa, a day after 31 rebel and jihadist fighters were killed during the takeover of a strategic hill, Tal al-Jabiyeh, near besieged Nawa town.

The Observatory had earlier reported an unknown number of soldiers killed or taken prisoner.

Activists in the area said the takeover was significant because the hill had been used as a launching pad to bomb several rebel-held areas nearby.

Syria's war has killed more than 150,000 people in three years, and forced nearly half of the population to flee their homes.

The conflict broke out after the regime unleashed a massive crackdown against a peaceful movement demanding political change.

Meanwhile, opposition activists said that Syrian regime forces killed at least 115 people on Thursday in several cities across the country.

Assad forces killed 66 people in Aleppo, 19 in Daraa'a, 11  in the suburbs of Damascus, six in Idlib, five each in Quneitra and Homs, two in Deir-ez Zor, one in Hama, according to the London-based Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), which tracks civilian and dissident casualties.

14 children and four women were among the dead, with many people injured in artillery and rocket attacks by the regime forces, said the SNHR.

An additional report from the Local Coordination Committees of Syria (LCCS), a network of local opposition groups, said that army helicopters dropped several bombs on the opposition-controlled areas of Aleppo which resulted in the destruction of several homes and the ensuing rescue of the injured from the debris. 

It was also reported in the statement that regime forces attacked Damascus’s Douma, Jobar, el-Muleyha, Qabun, Darayya, and Eastern Guta areas with artillery and rocket fire, and intense clashes also took place between the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and regime forces in Aleppo.

SANA, the Syrian official news agency, said the security forces neutralized armed groups in Aleppo, Hama, Daraa'a and Latakia during operations across the country. 

More than 100,000 people have been killed during the three-year conflict, which has also internally displaced more than 6.5 million people, according to the UN. Over two million are now registered as refugees in neighboring Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq.