Airstrikes kill at least 11 in Syria as Geneva talks continue
Airstrikes on Syria's rebel-held Idlib province killed at least 11 people on overnight, opposition activists said, in the latest spasm of violence to mar UN-brokered talks in Geneva between the government and the opposition.
Separately, there were unconfirmed reports that a top al-Qaeda official was killed in an airstrike, also in Idlib.
Also overnight, pro-government forces drove ISIS militants out of a line of villages in the congested Turkish frontier region, blocking the path of rival Turkish-backed opposition forces from reaching the de facto ISIS capital, Raqqa, activists said.
The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist groups, said Abdullah Muhammad Rajab Abdulrahman, the deputy to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, may have been killed in a US airstrike on an unmarked sedan yesterday.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that a top al-Qaida official was killed in a drone strike, but could not confirm it was al-Masri.
Al-Masri was a close affiliate to late al-Qaida founder Osama Bin Laden and was once the chairman of the organisation's management council, according to a Washington Post report citing leaked US intelligence documents dating back to 2008.
A senior official at a rival jihadist faction in northern Syria urged caution over the reports. There was no immediate comment from the Pentagon.
In central-north Syria, government forces and allied Hezbollah militiamen cut an arc through ISIS-held territory to reach independent, Kurdish-led forces near the Euphrates River, effectively preventing Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces from heading south from the frontier toward Raqqa.
The opposition forces, which seized al-Bab from the ISIS last week, will now have to confront government forces or the rival Kurdish forces if they desire to reach Raqqa, farther southwest along the Euphrates river.
The opposition forces are accompanied by a deployment of Turkish troops, tanks and artillery inside Syrian territory. Turkey says the nearby Kurdish-led forces are terrorists.
Back in Idlib, the activist-run Baladi News network published footage of rescuers searching for victims in the rubble of a block destroyed in presumed government or Russian airstrikes overnight, in the town of Areeha in northwest Syria.
The Syrian Civil Defense search-and-rescue group said it had counted 15 fatalities.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least seven civilians and four other unidentified victims had been killed. It blamed the attack on government warplanes.
The strikes come as an opposition delegation gears up to meet Monday with UN mediator Staffan de Mistura in Geneva to continue talks aimed at resolving Syria's six-year-old war.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/airstrikes-kill-least-11-in-syria-geneva-talks-continue