Fresh mortar attack kills 5 in Syria's Aleppo

Five people were killed and 26 others were wounded Tuesday, when mortar shells struck two pro- government districts of the Syria's northern city of Aleppo, the official SANA news agency reported. The mortars were fired by "terrorists" on the Nile and Mokambo streets in Aleppo city, which has been battered by intense battles between the government troops and the armed militant groups. Some of the wounded are in critical conditions, said SANA. The attack came just hours after one woman was killed and five others, including two school students, were wounded by a rebel mortar attack against three areas of the capital Damascus, namely the southern districts of al-Qassa and Abbasyeen and the Jawdat al- Hashimi high school in central Damascus. The mortar attacks against Damascus' districts have also left property losses, according to SANA. The rebels have opted to mortar attacks to destabilize government-controlled areas and such mortar shelling has become a daily routine. Separately, SANA said the Syrian troops killed tens of rebels in the northwestern province of Idlib on Tuesday, adding that the Syrian armed forces targeted the rebels in the vicinity of the towns of Hara and al-Ghafar in the countryside of Idlib. The government forces also foiled an attack by militant groups on a military position in the country's southern province of Qunaitera earlier on Tuesday, according to SANA. Meanwhile, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Tuesday updated the death toll of Syria's 3-year-old crisis, saying over 150,000 people have been killed since the eruption of the Syrian crisis in mid-March, 2011.