Moscow hopes for truce 'within hours'

Russia said yesterday it hoped a new ceasefire could be announced within hours for Syria's battered city of Aleppo, where fresh fighting left at least 16 dead including in rocket fire on a maternity hospital.

As the city was struck by some of its heaviest reported clashes in recent days, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said efforts were underway to agree a freeze in the fighting.

"I am hoping that in the near future, maybe even in the next few hours, such a decision will be announced," Lavrov told reporters after talks with the UN's Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura in Moscow.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council yesterday demanded that hospitals and clinics be protected in war zones, in a resolution that draws attention to the rise in attacks on medical workers in conflicts worldwide.

After a relative lull in clashes on Monday and early yesterday, rebels in eastern Aleppo fired a barrage of at least 65 rockets into government-controlled neighbourhoods, Syrian state news agency SANA reported.

At least three women were killed when the rockets crashed into a maternity hospital, the agency and state television said, and another 11 killed in fire on other government-held neighbourhoods.

The truce between President Bashar al-Assad's regime and non-jihadist rebel forces raised hopes for efforts to finally resolve Syria's five-year conflict. But it has all but collapsed amid renewed fighting, especially in Aleppo.