Air strikes hit refugee camp

At least 28 people, including women and children, were killed when air strikes hit a camp for internally displaced people in Syria's Idlib province near the Turkish border yesterday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The death toll at the camp near the town of Sarmada was expected to rise because of the number of seriously wounded people, the Observatory said.

"There were two aerial strikes that hit this makeshift camp for refugees who have taken refuge from fighting in southern Aleppo and Palmyra. The camp took two direct hits. I heard many tents were on fire," said Abu Ibrahim al-Sarmadi, an activist from the nearby town of Atmeh who has been speaking to people near the affected camp.

He said wounded people were rushed to the Bab al-Hawa border crossing for treatment in Turkey.

The White House condemned the air strike as inexcusable.

Meanwhile a cessation of hostilities agreement brokered by Russia and the United States brought a measure of relief to the battered Syrian city of Aleppo yesterday but President Bashar al-Assad said he still sought a total, crushing victory over rebel forces.

Syrian state media said the army would abide by a "regime of calm" in the city that came into effect at 1:00am for 48 hours, and relative calm prevailed yesterday morning after two weeks of death and destruction.

Elsewhere in Syria, fighting persisted. Islamic State militants captured the Shaer gas field in eastern Syria yesterday, according to rebel sources and a monitor.

Assad said he would accept nothing less than an outright victory against rebels in Aleppo and across Syria, state media reported.

People in several districts in Aleppo ventured out onto the streets where more shops than normal had opened, the resident of al Shaar neighborhood said. Another resident said civilians in several districts sensed a general trend toward calm.

A rebel source also said that despite intermittent firing across the city's main front lines, fighting had subsided and no army shelling of residential areas had been heard.

Syria's conflict has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions since it started after the brutal crackdown of anti-government protests in 2011.