Syrian rebels bomb Aleppo after withdrawal

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian rebels bombed Aleppo on Friday and killed three people, state television reported, a day after insurgents finished withdrawing from their last pocket of territory in the city.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in the United Kingdom, said that around 10 projectiles fell in the al-Hamdaniya neighborhood in south-western Aleppo.

The rebels who seek to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have been frequently targeting the government-controlled Aleppo areas throughout the conflict that began in 2011.

The destruction in these parts of the city has been much lower than in the eastern neighborhoods that the rebels occupied until this month.

The latter left the village late Thursday on the way to the interior immediately west of Aleppo, following a ceasefire agreement during which the International Committee of the Red Cross said about 35,000 people, mostly civilians , Left the city.

Many of those who left the city now live as refugees in areas west and south of Aleppo, including Idlib province, where excavators were used to remove a large amount of snow this morning, as the opposition broadcaster Orient.

Also on Friday morning, the army and its allies, including the Lebanese group Hezbollah, have searched districts abandoned by insurgents to rid them of mines and other dangers, the Observatory reported.

(By Angus McDowall)