DAMASCUS: A snapshot of developments across Syria on Thursday, where the world community was piling on the pressure to end 17 months of bloodshed and the conflict threatened to entangle neighbouring Lebanon.
- The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that the army pummelled districts across the embattled northern city of Aleppo, notably the northeastern neighbourhoods of Shaar and Qadi Askar. In southwest Aleppo, the army bombarded the flashpoint districts of Salaheddin, which loyalist troops recaptured last week, and the neighbouring district of Saif al-Dawla, which the regime is trying to take back from the opposition.
- In the region of Damascus the army frees a team abducted on August 10 from official television during a military operation.
- Around 100 Syrians injured in an air strike a day earlier on the the town of Aazaz near Aleppo are taken across the border to hospitals in Turkey. Some 15 Syrians die of their wounds in hospital, a Turkish official says. The Observatory says that 31 people were killed in the aerial attack and 200 were injured.
- Fighting and bombing take place in several other locations, the Observatory says, adding that 70 were killed, including 42 civilians, across the country.
- Iran slams a decision by the top world Muslim body, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, to suspend Syria's membership, calling the step against its key ally "unfair and unjust". An emergency OIC summit in the Saudi holy city of Mecca says it has agreed to suspend Syria because of "deep concern at the massacres and inhuman acts suffered by the Syrian people".
- Lebanon's president holds urgent talks to try to contain an eruption of violence triggered by events in Syria after mass kidnappings and street attacks against Syrians by armed Shiites.
- China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi urges a visiting Syrian envoy to implement a ceasefire and accept international mediation to end the violence.
The envoy, Bouthaina Shaaban , praises the attitude of China and Russia.
- UN aid chief Valerie Amos says she is still pushing Damascus to allow international aid organisations to operate in Syria, warning that more than one million Syrians face "destitution".
- French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius says President Bashar al-Assad is "butchering his own people" and "the sooner he goes the better".
- The UN Security Council was to meet to meet to formally end the UN observer mission in Syria.
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