Regime suffers fresh blow

Lebanon's Hezbollah yesterday announced that its top military commander had been killed in an attack in Syria where the Shia militant group has deployed thousands of fighters in support of the Damascus regime.

The group said it was still investigating the cause of the blast near Damascus airport but it did not immediately point the finger at Israel as it did when the commander's predecessor was assassinated in the Syrian capital in 2008.

The death of Mustafa Badreddine, who had led Hezbollah's intervention in support of President Bashar al-Assad's regime since the start, came as a fragile truce in the country's five-year conflict teetered on the brink of collapse.

A six-day-old ceasefire in battleground second city Aleppo expired early Thursday without renewal and rebel sniper fire on the government-held sector of the city killed two civilians, one of them a woman, a monitoring group said.

Heavy air strikes pounded al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate Al-Nusra Front in its Idlib province stronghold in the northwest, killing 16 of its fighters, including a senior commander. Badreddine had been a key player in Hezbollah's military wing virtually since its inception.

He was on a US terror sanctions blacklist, was a key suspect in the 2005 assassination in Beirut of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, and was one of Israel's most wanted men.

"Badreddine is assessed to be responsible for Hezbollah's military operations in Syria since 2011," the US Treasury Department said, adding that he liaised personally with Assad.

An aid convoy was refused entry to Syria's Daraya Thursday, the Red Cross said, dashing hopes for the first such delivery since regime forces began a siege of the rebel-held town in 2012.

The five-truck convoy organised by the ICRC, the United Nations and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent had been due to deliver baby milk and medical and school supplies to Daraya.

Further north in the province of Idlib, unidentified aircraft carried out more than 60 raids targeting a military airport controlled by al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate, killing 16 jihadists from Al-Nusra Front and allied fighters, a monitor said.

Meanwhile, Belgium yesterday said it would extend its F-16 air strikes against Islamic State jihadists in Iraq into Syria. Belgium launched its first attacks against IS in Iraq in late 2014 as part of the US-led coalition, but decided against strikes in Syria amid public fears over getting dragged into a wider conflict.