Syrian warplanes bombed the rebel-held town of Douma near Damascus and parts of Aleppo in the north on Saturday, killing 23 people, with the death toll likely to rise, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Mediators have struggled to get combatants in Syria’s five-year-old war to honour a Feb. 27 cessation of hostilities deal to enable peace talks in Geneva to proceed.

Fighting has escalated around Aleppo, Idlib, Latakia, Damascus and other areas over the past week and the main opposition group walked out of Geneva peace talks this week in protest at government attacks.
The Geneva talks aim to end a war that has killed more than 250,000 people, created the world’s worst refugee crisis, allowed for the rise of the Islamic State group and drawn in regional and major powers.
The Britain-based Observatory, which monitors the Syrian war through a network of contacts, said the death toll in Douma, northeast of the capital, was expected to rise from 23 because more than 22 others were injured, some critically.
 

There was also fighting near Bala in the southeast of Damascus between rebel groups and government forces with deaths occurring on both sides.
In Aleppo, at least ten people were killed, including a child, by bombs dropped from planes in an insurgent-controlled eastern neighbourhood of what was Syria’s commercial hub before the civil war began in 2011.
This is the second day of heavy bombardment on Aleppo. Nineteen people were killed on Friday in similar air attacks.
On Friday, the U.N. special envoy for Syria vowed to take the talks into next week despite the opposition suspending their involvement.
 

Source: Reuters, 23 April 2016