Turkish shelling in Syria’s Aleppo kills 55 Daesh terrorists: Officials

Turkish authorities say the country's forces have killed at least 55 Daesh terrorists in the northwestern Syrian province of Aleppo.

The Takfiris were killed on Saturday in retaliation for recurrent rocket attacks on the Turkish border town of Kilis, according to military sources on Sunday

Turkish artillery targeted several regions in the province, destroying rocket installations and three vehicles in addition to killing the terrorists.

Over the past few weeks, at least 20 people have died and some 70 more injured by militant rocket fire on Kilis. According to local authorities, the terrorists cross the border with motorbikes, open fire on the towns, and retreat before they can be targeted by Turkish howitzers stationed at the border.

The town is located some 60 kilometers north of Aleppo and is home to some 110,000 Syrian refugees displaced by the crisis that has engulfed the country over the past five years.

In a separate operation, US-led coalition forces killed 48 Daesh members in various locations in northern Syria.

Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned lack of support by international forces battling Daesh.

"They have left us alone in our struggle against this organization which is shedding our blood both through suicide bombings and by attacks on Kilis," he said.

"In Syria none of those who say they are fighting Daesh have suffered the kind of losses that we have, nor paid such a heavy price as us," he added while speaking at a film contest in Istanbul. 

First casualties since truce

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that three civilians have been killed and 15 more wounded by militant rocket fire in Aleppo.

According to the UK-based monitoring group, a woman and a child were among those killed in the attack.

The casualties were said to be the first since a US, Russian-backed ceasefire took place in the embattled province on Thursday.  The truce is set to expire at 2101 GMT on Monday.

Aleppo has been divided between government forces in the west and militants in the east since 2012.

Khan Tuman liberation

Syrian government jets, meanwhile, carried out attacks on terrorist-held positions in the strategic town of Khan Tuman near Aleppo.

Takfiri militants, led by fellow terrorists from the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, took control of Khan Tuman on Friday, shortly before a 48-hour truce in Aleppo was due to expire.

Syrian forces together with military advisors from Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and fighters from the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement as well as Iraq’s Mobilization Units have converged on the outskirts of the town, located southwest of the provincial capital city of Aleppo, and are gearing up to retake the town.

Iran has slammed Takfiri terrorists’ occupation of the strategic village reiterating that the Syrian crisis can be resolved only through political means.

Terrorists and armed groups, erroneously called moderate opposition, have joined hands in capitalizing on the ceasefire in Syria, said Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, on Saturday.

Also on Saturday, the IRGC announced in a statement that 13 of its military advisers had been killed and 21 others wounded in Khan Tuman over the last few days.  

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. The United Nations special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimates that over 400,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which has also displaced over half of the Arab country's pre-war population of about 23 million.

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