Shelling on Syrian mosque kills 8

Deadly fighting has resumed in Syria's divided second city of Aleppo, after a brief lull overnight. State media say rebels shelled a mosque in the government-held district of Bab al-Faraj yesterday, killing eight people.

Rescue workers report that a clinic in rebel-held Marja was targeted in an air strike, the second medical facility to be hit in a week.

The military meanwhile has announced a "regime of calm" will take effect elsewhere in Syria early today. It will last, it says, for 24 hours in Damascus and the Eastern Ghouta region outside the capital, and for 72 hours in the northern countryside of Latakia province.

The "regime of calm" is not explained nor is there any mention of Aleppo, where seven days of escalating violence has left more than 200 civilians dead.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, says one person was killed in yesterday's air strikes on rebel-held Aleppo, while the Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC), an opposition activist network, puts the death toll at three.

The Syrian Civil Defence, whose volunteer emergency response workers are known as the "White Helmets", say that among the sites targeted by government warplanes was a clinic in Marja that had provided dental services and treatment for chronic illnesses, AFP news agency reports.

Several people were wounded, including at least one nurse, it adds.

On Wednesday night, the al-Quds Hospital in the rebel-held Sukkari district was completely destroyed in air strikes that US Secretary of State John Kerry said appeared to have been "deliberate".

The Free Aleppo Doctors Association said yesterday that at least 50 people, including five members of staff, had been killed.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the attack was "unacceptable" and warned that Aleppo was being "pushed further to the brink of humanitarian disaster".

The LCC said it had documented a total of 73 deaths in rebel-held Aleppo on Thursday, most of them the result of air strikes, reports BBC.

Before yesterday's mosque shelling, the official Sana news agency reported that at least 33 people had been killed in government-controlled areas in 24 hours.

The UN human rights chief, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, yesterday said violence was "soaring back to the levels we saw prior to the cessation of hostilities".

"There are deeply disturbing reports of military build-ups indicating preparations for a lethal escalation," Zeid said. The reports revealed a "monstrous disregard for civilian lives by all parties to the conflict", he added.

The United Nations has called on Moscow and Washington to help restore the ceasefire to prevent the collapse of peace talks, which broke up this week in Geneva with virtually no progress after the opposition walked out, reports Reuters.

"The cessation of hostilities and the Geneva talks were the only game in town, and if they are abandoned now, I dread to think how much more horror we will see in Syria," Zeid said.

The war in Syria has killed more than 250,000 people, with the UN envoy giving a toll as high as 400,000.