Syrian regime helicopters have dropped more than 600 barrel bombs on southern Daraa province in the last two weeks as well its warplanes have conducted at least 180 raids, including 83 Napalm bomb raids, Civil Defense said Thursday.
The local monitoring group said also 580 surface-to-surface missiles were pounded Daraa countryside.
The death toll of the aerial and ground campaign reached atotal of 74, including 13 children and 4 women.
On Wednesday, at least 12 people, including 5 children and 3 women, were killed in regime air strikes on a school sheltering displaced people in Tafas town in the western countryside of Daraa.
The regime army and Iran-backed Hezbollah militia have escalated attacks against a rebel-held part of the southern city of Daraa, a possible prelude to a large-scale campaign to wrest full control of the city, rebels and residents told Reuters.
The intensive raids and bombing strikes mainly pounded the southern part of Daraa, strategically located on the border with Jordan and where the uprising against Bashar al-Assad erupted six years ago.
In the city of Daraa, regime warplanes carried out more than 12 raids since early morning.
The Assad army, also, has recently intensified dropping barrel bombs, drums or cylinders packed with shrapnel, and has fired hundreds of so-called elephant rockets on Daraa's old quarter and a former refugee camp nearby, rebels and residents said
