(Zaman Al Wasl)- Syrian regime warplanes bombed three schools in northern Idlib province, official body said Saturday as air strikes kill 9 people in the southern countryside.
The Directorate of Education in rebel-held Idlib said 3 schools in the villages of Kafr Eyn, Maerzeita and al-Hubait were partially destroyed due the deliberate air strikes.
Two teachers have lost their legs and many students wounded, according to the directorate.
The aerial bombing on Khan Sheikhoun town and Jbala village has also killed 9 people dead, local activists said.
In the battleground city of Aleppo, regime forces have retaken "full control" of the rebel-held district of Masaken Hanano in northern , state media said on Saturday.
Regime-run television said "the armed forces retook full control" of the largest rebel district in the east of the city, and official news agency SANA said operations were now under way to clear it of mines and bombs.
"The armed forces retook full control of Masaken Hanano after having put an end to the presence of terrorists there," the state broadcaster said, referring to the rebels fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
The capture of Masaken Hanano in the northeast of Aleppo could give the army line-of-fire control over several other parts of the city's rebel-held east.
Regime forces had been advancing inside the neighbourhood for several days, and on Friday state television said they were progressing "from three axes".
The operation is part of a major offensive now in its 12th day to take back all of Aleppo, Syria's second city and its economic capital before the war broke out in March 2011.
Since November 15, regime bombardment of eastern Aleppo has killed 212 civilians, including 27 children, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP on Saturday that the government forces were in control of 80 percent of Masaken Hanano and had the rest in their line of fire.
"They just hundreds of metres (yards) away from isolating the northern districts of east Aleppo from the southern ones," he said.
More than 250,000 civilians have been trapped under siege for months in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, with dwindling food and fuel supplies.
The battleground city in northern Syria has been divided between the government-controlled western areas and the rebel-held eastern districts since 2012. (With AFP)
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