Deadly fighting rages across Syria

Deadly violence raged across Syria today as regime shelling killed at least 18 civilians in the northwest while 28 rebels died in Damascus battling government forces, a monitoring group said.
The latest bloodshed came as Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil was due to travel to Moscow tomorrow for talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on ways of ending the 28-month conflict.
At total of at least 82 people were killed in violence across Syria today, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which relies on a network of activists and medics for its information.
The deadly shelling of Ariha by regime forces in the northwestern province of Idlib also left dozens wounded, said the Observatory, as activists denounced a "massacre" in a video posted online that showed people carrying corpses and bloodied body parts.

Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said regime forces opened fire on the main market in central Ariha from positions they control on the edges of town.
It was not immediately clear what triggered the shelling, but rebels control part of Ariha while regime forces man three checkpoints inside the town.

The Observatory said clashes had erupted in Ariha over the week, as rebels try to expand their control over the town.
In the northeast Damascus flashpoint area of Adra, fierce fighting at dawn between rebels and government troops killed 28 insurgents and a member of the elite Republican Guards, Abdel Rahman said.

Adra is an entry point to the capital's Abbasiyeen Square, the target of several rebel attacks in recent months.
State news agency SANA said the army "captured several terrorists from (the Islamist) Al-Nusra Front, some of them foreign nationals," west of Adra.
Further north, the battle for Syria's second city and commercial hub Aleppo entered its second year with fighting raging around the city's international airport and nearby Nairab air base, said the Britain-based Observatory.
The violence in Aleppo comes a year after a massive rebel advance on the city, where both sides have been mired in a stalemate which insurgents have tried to break by infiltrating the regime-held Rashidin district.