Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Scourge of Qusayr...
dropped barrel bombs and fired rockets on the northern city of Aleppo, killing at least 51 people, opposition activists said, as peace talks to end the war ground on.
The dead included 38 civilians, seven of them members of the same family, the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists in Syria, said in a statement. Barrel bombs are made from oil drums filled with explosives and are dropped from the air.
Syria's state-run SANA news agency said government troops carried out a "series of powerful strikes" against "terrorists" in Aleppo, including Saudi, Jordanian and Iraqi fighters.
The violence came on the fourth day of the second round of peace talks between Assad loyalists and an opposition delegation in the Swiss city of Geneva. United Nations
...where theory meets practice and practice loses...
mediator Lakhdar Brahimi is set to meet Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Gennady Gatilov and U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman today. He didn't meet with either of the Syrian delegations.
The talks haven't made much headway with the two sides still divided over the agenda of the meetings. The Syrian conflict, which began in March 2011, has evolved into a civil war that has killed more than 130,000 people.