Rebel shelling kills children at school in west Aleppo: government, monitor

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Shelling by Syrian rebels killed several children at a school in government-held western Aleppo on Thursday, state media and a monitoring group said, just a day after air strikes on a school in a rebel-held village in Idlib, 50km (32 miles) away. The shells hit two neighborhoods, Syrian state news agency SANA reported: the national school in the Shahaba area, killing three children and wounding more than a dozen others, and the other attack killed three people in Hamdaniya. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor of the five-year-old war, said six children under the age of 16 had been killed in the two attacks, including a baby. Syria's largest city before the war, Aleppo has been divided between government and opposition sectors for years. Wednesday's air strikes hit a school in the Haas village in rebel-held Idlib, killing at least 15 school children, an attack that Western countries have blamed on the Syrian military and Russian air force. Moscow has denied involvement. (Reporting by Ellen Francis; Editing by Angus McDowall and Louise Ireland)