Here’s a summary of the main events on Syria today:
• Several residents in the northern city of Aleppo are feared dead after a government air raid on the rebel held district of Hanano hit a residential block. Video of the aftermath of the raid showed people searching for survivors of an apartment block reduced to rubble. The attack came after rebels a barracks in the area, which was also hit.
• A German-based Syrian film maker has been killed in Aleppo according to activists. Tamer Al-Awam is reported to have died from shrapnel wounds he sustained while accompanying rebels fighters in Aleppo.
• The new international envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, plans to to travel to Tehran after a trip to Damascus, according to the Iranian Mehr news agency.Brahimi is reported to be on his way to Cairo on his first visit to the region since taking up the post. Iran is also reported to be due to take part in Syria talks hosted by Egypt alongside Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
• Thousands of residents have fled southern Damscus after government troops stormed the rebel districts, opposition activists said. President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have largely preferred to use air power and artillery to hit areas where rebels are dug in, deploying infantry only once many have fled. Activists said the new ground onslaught put civilians at risk.
• Abu Sayyaf, a Jordanian militant leader linked to al-Qaida warned that his group will launch “deadly attacks” in Syria to topple President Bashar Assad. The warning comes after Jacques Beres, the French surgeon who co-founded Medecins Sans Frontieres, claimed Islamist have swollen the ranks of Syrian rebels, after he returned from a two-week stint in Aleppo.
• Rebel superiority on the ground outside Damascus means the Assad regime will be routed within four months, according to Mustafa al-Sheikh, head of the Free Syrian Army’s military council. In an interview with al-Arabiya he said: “Four months is the maximum time if we take into account the irreversible damages inflicted upon the state army and the deteriorating morale of its officers .
• A key water supply to the second city of Aleppo has burst after clashes between rebel and government troops, the New York Times reports. There were competing accounts of which side was to blame. The opposition Syrian National Council warned of a humanitarian crisis because water shortages, but an activist in the city said much of the city still had water.
• US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has rejected a new Russian-backed UN resolution on Syria as pointless because it puts no pressure on the Assad regime, AFP reports. On a visit to Russia, Clinton said: “There is no point to passing a resolution with no teeth because we’ve seen time and time again that Assad will ignore it and keep attacking his own people.”
• Three rockets fired from Syria hit an Iraqi border town on Saturday, killing a 5-year-old girl, locals and officials said, in the most serious spillover from the neighbouring country’s civil war. As rebels fought government forces for an airfield and military base near the Syrian border town of Albu Kamal, Katyusha rockets hit a residential area of al Qaim in Iraq, smashing through a wall of one house and killing a girl inside.