A man carries a boy after rescuing him from under the rubble of a building damaged by explosive barrels dropped by forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in the Al-Shaar neighbourhood of Aleppo yesterday. Photo: Reuters

Two people were killed and eight wounded when mortar fire hit the grounds of the Damascus Opera House in the Syrian capital, state media said yesterday.

President Bashar al-Assad’s forces are in control of central Damascus, but rebels have been able to launch mortar and rocket attacks into the city’s centre, sometimes hitting heavily secured upmarket districts and embassy grounds.

“Two citizens were martyred and eight others wounded by mortars fired by terrorists at the opera house,” the state news agency Sana said, without specifying when the attack occurred.

Elsewhere, at least 13 rebel fighters were killed in a vehicle explosion in the central city of Homs, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that the death toll was likely to rise. There were no more immediate details.

The Observatory, which monitors violence through a network of sources in Syria, said at least five people including three children had also been killed in the Damascus suburb of Douma during shelling by government forces.

In Mleiha, a suburb to the east of Damascus, government war planes carried out air strikes during heavy fighting with rebels.

Elsewhere, government helicopters dropped barrel bombs in the northern province of Aleppo, in Deraa in the south and Latakia in the west, the group said.

Assad’s forces also shelled the area around Kasab, a village in the north of Latakia province that rebels seized about two weeks ago. Late on Saturday, two fighters from the Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, were killed in the easterly Hasaka province during fighting around the town of Markadah with an al-Qaeda splinter group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Observatory said.

Meanwhile, also on Saturday, at least one Syrian refugee was killed in Jordan’s sprawling Zaatari camp when hundreds of refugees clashed with security forces,.

They said scores of refugees in the sprawling camp close to the Syrian border were injured as baton-wielding anti-riot police used tear gas to disperse stone-throwing refugees who set fire to official offices and caravans.

Helicopters drop barrel bombs on Aleppo province

Jordanian police blamed agitators who were apprehended after trying to flee the refugee camp of nearly 70,000 residents. Authorities said at least 22 anti-riot police were hospitalised for treatment but denied any deaths occurred.

Residents say the rioting, the first such serious disturbance this year, was provoked when a Jordanian security officer ran over with his car and seriously injured a 4-year old Syrian child, prompting outrage by residents and relatives protesting ill treatment.

The camp witnessed almost daily protests over living conditions when it was first set up nearly two years ago but protests have since dwindled as UN agencies stepped up improvements in its infrastructure and services.

The UN says 2.5 million Syria refugees have registered in total, more than 10 per cent of Syria’s population. Jordan hosts at least 600,000 refugees with the rest mainly in Lebanon and Turkey.

Syria’s three-year-old conflict has killed more than 150,000 people and forced millions to flee their homes.