First air strikes on Syria's Aleppo since truce: monitor
Four air strikes hit rebel-held parts of Syria's Aleppo on Sunday, a monitor said, in the first raids on the battered city since a truce took effect.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said several people were wounded but could not immediately give details about casualties or identify who carried out the strikes.
A halt to fighting around Aleppo and the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid were key components of the fragile truce, which began on Monday evening.
While the front lines had remained calm, civilians in the besieged eastern quarters had yet to receive promised food assistance.
The estimated 250,000 people in the eastern half of the city have been living under government siege since early September.
Rebel groups - which have yet to formally sign on to the truce - have regularly pledged to break the encirclement.
The head of Fateh al-Sham Front, which changed its name from Al-Nusra Front after renouncing its ties to Al-Qaeda, said late Saturday that opposition fighters would do all they could to end the encirclement.
Abu Mohamed al-Jolani said "neither we nor rebel groups will allow the siege of Aleppo to continue."
Strategic hill retaken
The Syrian army took control of key strategic hill tops from the Islamic State group on Saturday, after the US-led coalition bombing of its bases yesterday forced the Syrian army to pull back its troops.
Damascus said it launched the attack against the IS militants on Jabal Therdah who had surrounded key government positions.
The US-led coalition confirmed in a statement on Saturday that it had mistakenly bombed a Syrian army airbase, killing dozens of Syrian government troops.
Washington stopped the attack on the airbase after Russia notified coalition commanders that they were bombing a Syrian army airbase.
The Syrian government reacted angrily to the US attacks, saying it was forced to move its troops back from the hilltops overlooking the besieged airbase on the outskirts of the city of Deir ez-Zor.
The hilltop is vital for the Syrian government as control of them would enable IS militants to shoot down Syrian air-force aircraft taking off from the airbase.
SOHR said that at least 30 IS militants were killed in the army's counter-attack.
A senior adviser to President Bashar al-Assad Sunday said the strike against Syrian soldiers was "intentional", but said Damascus remained committed to a fragile truce.
In a phone interview from the Syrian capital, Buthaina Shaaban told AFP that Assad's government "believes that the strike was intentional".
"None of the facts on the ground show that what happened was a mistake or a coincidence," she said.
More than 300,000 people have been killed since Syria's conflict erupted in March 2011 with protests calling for the ouster of Assad.
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