At least 18 dead as Syrian town blitzed

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees said the airstrikes targeted a residential area in the northern town of al-Bab, about 20 miles from the Turkish border. The Observatory said 18 people were killed in the town; the LCC put the death toll at 25.

An amateur video showed men frantically searching for bodies in the rubble of a white buildings. The video could not be independently verified.

Syrian’s uprising began in March 2011 with largely peaceful protests against President Bashar Assad’s regime, but has since morphed into a civil war. Activists say at least 23,000 people have been killed so far.

Diplomatic efforts, including a six-point peace plan by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, to solve the conflict have failed so far and Mr Annan’s replacement, Lakhdar Brahimi, a 78-year-old former Algerian diplomat, has warned of the difficulty of the task he must now face.

“We discussed this several times and I can’t think of anything that I would have done differently from him,” Mr Brahimi said. “It is definitely a very, very difficult mission.”

Information Minister Omran al-Zoebi vowed Syria “will give him maximum assistance the way we did with Kofi Annan”.

The Assad regime made similar public statements when it signed up to Mr Annan’s peace plan, only to frequently ignore or outright violate its commitments.

Meanwhile, France’s foreign minister Laurent Fabius said western powers were preparing a “blistering” response if the Assad regime used chemical or biological weapons.