Aleppo blitz kills 300

A renewed blitz on Syria's war-ravaged eastern Aleppo has killed almost 300 people in five days -- including children as the UN's envoy struggled to push peace efforts in Damascus.

Fresh fighting shook Aleppo yesterday with a rebel attack killing at least eight children at a school.

The envoy, Staffan de Mistura, met with Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Muallem in Damascus for talks on the escalating violence in Aleppo, but was rebuffed on a truce proposal that would allow the opposition to administer the city's rebel-held east.

International concern has been growing over the fighting, after Damascus launched a ferocious assault in Aleppo last Tuesday, using air strikes, barrel bombs and artillery fire in a bid to recapture the east of the battered city.

On Sunday, rebels retaliated with a barrage of rockets into the government-held west of the city, killing at least eight children at a school in the Furqan neighbourhood, Syrian state media said.

State television showed bloodied, weeping children being treated in a local hospital, and an AFP journalist saw students being rushed from the school and comforted in the aftermath of the attack.

A damaged classroom. Photo: AFP

The attacks have also obliterated desperately needed hospitals, worsening an already dire humanitarian situation. On Saturday, the Syrian American Medical Society told CNN that not a single hospital in eastern Aleppo was operating at full capacity.

At least 289 people were killed between Tuesday and Saturday last week, said the Syrian Civil Defense -- a volunteer rescue group also known as the White Helmets. The deaths came as the Syrian regime resumed airstrikes on the war-ravaged area after a three-week lull.

The death toll is likely to climb, as the White Helmets said another 950 people were injured. And dozens remain missing in what the rescue group described as "nonstop attacks."

Saturday saw intense bombardment, with 68 people killed, according to the Aleppo Media Center activist group. Strikes continued Sunday, but at a lower intensity, activists said.

Syria's grinding five-year conflict has devastated Aleppo, divided between government-controlled areas in the west and rebel positions in the east.

The Syrian regime, backed by Russian air power, has decimated much of eastern Aleppo with aerial bombardments in recent months, and has threatened a ground offensive to seize control of the area.

Aid agencies have struggled to get aid into the zone. Government forces have besieged the area since July, essentially cutting the area off from the rest of the world -- a stranglehold tactic that the Syrian regime is infamous for. As a result, food, medicine and fuel supplies are desperately low.

More than 300,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began with anti-government protests in March 2011. Successive international attempts to find a peaceful resolution to the war have failed.

WORST TRAIN DISASTERS 

An express train derailed in northern India early Sunday, killing over 120 people. Here is a list of the five deadliest rail disasters worldwide in the past two decades:

1995, AUG 20: In India, 305 are killed and 344 injured in a collision between two trains at Ferozabad, near Agra in the north.

2002, FEB 20: In Egypt, 361 people are killed in a train fire near the town of Al Ayatt south of Cairo.

2002, JUNE 24: In Tanzania, 288 die in a train accident near Dodoma.

2004, FEB 18: In Iran, 328 people are killed by an explosion on a train carrying sulphur, petrol and fertiliser in the northeast.

2004, DEC 26: In Sri Lanka, 1,300 are killed out of 1,500 passengers on a train between Colombo and Galle. It is struck by a giant tsunami which ravaged 11 countries on the shores of the Indian Ocean.