Deadly clashes rage in Syria's Aleppo

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Syrian troops and rebels clashed on Friday in the city of Aleppo, where several people died when a shell crashed into a bakery as hundreds of residents queued for bread, reporters said.

They said around a dozen people, including three children, were killed and 20 wounded at the bakery in the eastern Tariq al-Bab district of the increasingly desperate northern city.

And troops repelled a rebel attack on Aleppo's international airport, state news agency SANA reported. "Mercenary terrorists" had tried to attack it but the "army hit back and killed most of them."

In the latest clashes, Aleppo's historic Citadel, part of a UNESCO-listed world heritage site, was heavily damaged by bombing, the opposition said.

The violence raged on as world powers prepared to name veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi as their new envoy to seek an end to a 17-month uprising that has cost more than 21,000 lives.

The United States warned meanwhile that Syria's allies Iran and Hezbollah could be planning attacks on Western targets, as Washington imposed fresh sanctions on the regime and on the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

A rebel commander, Hossam Abu Mohammed, said his men were still fighting in parts of Aleppo's southwestern district of Salaheddin after most fled on Thursday in the face of heavy bombing and advancing troops.

"We will not let Salaheddin go," the Free Syrian Army's Abu Mohammed told AFP by telephone on the third day of a government offensive to take the city.

The army again bombed parts of Salaheddin, as well as the Sakhur and Hanano districts in the northeast, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

At least 103 people were killed nationwide on Friday, including 55 civilians, the watchdog said. One of those killed was a 19-year-old protester shot dead by regime forces in Aleppo.

In the central city of Homs, the army pounded the rebel stronghold of Khaldiyeh with "dozens" of people killed or wounded, the Observatory said.

Before dawn, a MiG 21 fighter jet dropped four bombs on rebel positions in Hanano, an AFP correspondent said. One struck the courtyard of an FSA compound and another struck a nearby house, wounding a number of people.

The opposition Syrian National Council said Aleppo's 13th-century Citadel, part of a complex of sites in the city's historic heart that the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation says is of "outstanding universal value," had been damaged in army shelling.

It was not possible to independently verify the claim.

Also on Friday, rebels captured three journalists who work for Syrian public television Ikhbariya as they accompanied government troops operating near Damascus, the Observatory said.

Ikhbariya later said it had lost contact with its crew.