WAR IN SYRIA
Rebels accused of 'chlorine' attack
Around 100 in Aleppo rushed to hospital with chemical attack symptoms; airstrikes hit Aleppo
♦ IS counter-attacks kill 47 US-backed fighters in east
♦ Regime and rebels swap prisoners
Around 100 Syrians have been hospitalised with breathing difficulties in Aleppo, state media and a monitor said yesterday, after allegations rebels fired "toxic gas" on the regime-held city the previous day.
A rebel alliance in nearby Idlib denied any involvement in the alleged attack. State news agency SANA reported "107 cases of breathing difficulties" in an updated toll yesterday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said a total of 94 people were hospitalised, but most had been discharged and the 31 cases that remained were not critical.
Meanwhile, air strikes hit the edges of Syria's last major rebel stronghold west of Aleppo yesterday, a monitor said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said regime ally Russia "likely" carried out the air strikes on a planned buffer zone around the opposition bastion of Idlib.
Late Saturday, state media accused rebels of launching an attack with "toxic gas" on the northern city in what health official Ziad Hajj Taha said was a "probable" chlorine attack.
On Saturday, an AFP photographer saw men, women and children being treated at an Aleppo hospital for breathing difficulties.
Some were sitting, while others lay down, breathing through with oxygen masks.
The regime controls Aleppo city, but rebels and jihadists are present to the west of the city in the country's last major opposition bastion of Idlib.
But a rebel coalition there yesterday denied involvement. Other groups in the area include the jihadist-dominated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham alliance and the al-Qaeda-linked Hurras al-Deen group, neither of whom have commented on the alleged attack.
Over the course of Syria's seven-year war, international human rights groups have repeatedly accused belligerents -- especially the regime -- of carrying out chemical attacks.
The Syrian government and rebels swapped prisoners Saturday in a "first important step" in building trust between the warring sides under a Russia-Iran-Turkey-brokered peace process, Turkey's foreign ministry said Saturday.
"Certain individuals" were exchanged simultaneously in northwest of Syria, near the town of Al-Bab close to Aleppo, the ministry said, calling it a "pilot project".
Russia, Iran and Turkey are working to bring about peace in Syria under what is known as the Astana process.
Meanwhile, counter-attacks by the IS group have killed at least 47 US-backed fighters over two days as the jihadists struck from their embattled holdout in eastern Syria. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Kurdish-led alliance supported by a US-led coalition is battling to expel the jihadists from a pocket in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor on the Iraqi border.