Syrian regime warplanes bombed the opposition-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 honor 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 regime attacks.

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 13 because more than 22 others were injured, some critically.

In Aleppo, at least ten people were killed, including a child, by bombs dropped from planes in an opposition-controlled eastern neighborhood of what was Syria's commercial hub before the 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 a Syrian regime warplane crashed southeast of Damascus.

On Friday, the U.N. special envoy for Syria vowed to take the talks into next week despite the opposition suspending their involvement.

PHOTO CAPTION

Civil defense members rest amid rubble of damaged buildings after an airstrike on the opposition-held Tariq al-Bab neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria April 23, 2016.

Reuters