202 civilians killed in past seven days of Aleppo violence

Reuters, Beirut :Air strikes on rebel-held areas of Aleppo killed 123 civilians including 18 children during the past seven days of intensified violence in the northern Syrian city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.Seventy-one civilians, including 13 children, were killed by rebel shelling into government-held areas of the city during the same period, the British-based monitoring group said.Eight more civilians, including three children, were killed by government shelling into areas not under its control in the city, the Observatory said.Meanwhile, Russia and the United States have agreed a “regime of silence” in Syria from midnight on Friday, RIA news agency cited a diplomatic source as saying.Moscow and Washington will act as guarantors to the agreement which will apply to areas in Latakia and in the suburbs of capital Damascus, RIA cited the source as saying.President Barack Obama says the US can meet his goal of resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees by Sept. 30, the end of the federal budget year. Obama says the goal he set last year has been challenging, partly because of the need to assure the US public that refugees are being thoroughly checked out.He says processes are in place to speed up the resettlements.Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz both called for blocking Muslims from being admitted to the U.S. following terrorist attacks last year in Paris and San Bernardino, California.Obama says accepting Syrian refugees is “the right thing to do” because they are victims of terrorism, violence and suffering caused by Syrian President Bashar Assad.Obama commented at a news conference with college reporters.