Rebels' attack kills 6 in Syria's Homs

At least six people were killed and 12 others wounded Saturday when rebels fired a shell that slammed into a marketplace of the country's central province of Homs, the official news agency SANA reported. The shell struck the al-Tanak marketplace at the Ensha'at neighborhood in Homs, leaving six people killed and 12 others wounded said SANA, spelling no further details. In a separate attack, 13 people were injured Saturday when rebels fired 17 mortar shells that slammed into the suburb of Jaramana, east of the capital Damascus. The recent endless mortar shelling by the rebels is considered as a response to the government troops' wide-scale offensive against rebel-held areas, mainly the eastern countryside of the capital Damascus. The government troops have recently waged a wide-scale offensive to dislodge the rebels from outlining towns of the capital, mainly from the Eastern al-Ghouta, which consists of largely agricultural towns that have fallen in the rebels' hands since more than a year ago. Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London- based watchdog group that documents Syria's events, said that two rebels' commanders were killed Saturday during the intense battles in the country's northern town of Kassab, in the countryside of the coastal province of Latakia on the borders with Turkey. The Syrian government claimed that the rebels' battles were driven by foreign jihadists affiliated with al-Qaida. The Observatory said that another Moroccan was killed a couple of days ago in Kassab, identifying him as Ibrahim Banshaqroun known as "Abu Ahman al-Maghribi," head of the Sham al-Islam jihadist movement and a previous prisoner in the Guantanamo prison. Separately, the Observatory said Saturday that the Syrian forces' airstrike on Friday against the rebel-held al-Sha'ar neighborhood in the northwestern province of Aleppo killed 19 people. More than 150,000 people were killed and millions displaced in Syria since opposition started protests in 2011, which later turned into war between the Syrian army and armed rebels. Source: XINHUA