The bombing of a bakery in Aleppo by Syrian government forces killed at least 20 people on Tuesday, said opposition sources. Women and children were among the dead.
The bakery is located in the district of Hananu controlled by the rebels in the east of Aleppo. Two shells have hit early afternoon, said Majd Nour, an opposition activist.
Earlier, the Syrian army has carried out airstrikes in Aleppo and Damascus raids, leaving little hope for the possibility of declaring a truce for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha in three days.
In Damascus, security forces conducted a campaign of raids in the suburb of al-Zahra. During the night, a man was killed by a roadside bomb in the southern suburbs of Damascus. In the east of the country, fighting took place near the local security headquarters in Deir Ezzor.
The violence occurred as the Syrian authorities deemed as "successful" the talks of international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi in Damascus. In a related development, Iran announced that "national dialogue" involving all Syrian parties could begin "soon" in Tehran or in other countries of the region. This dialogue will bring together " opposition groups (...) and representatives of the regime," said Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, while acknowledging that Iran "still trying to convince" some opposition movements who refused to participate.
Meanwhile, President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday declared a general amnesty, but excluded "terrorists," a word which refers to the rebels. According to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR), tens of thousands of civilians were imprisoned and thousands more have disappeared in the jails of the regime since the beginning of the uprising in mid-March 2011.
