Rocket fire on aid distribution centre kills 3 in Syria's Aleppo

At least three people, including a Red Crescent volunteer and a child, were killed when rebels fired on an aid distribution centre in Syria's Aleppo city, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Thursday. The war monitor identified the third fatality as a woman.

Aleppo was once Syria's economic powerhouse but it was ravaged by fighting from mid-2012, when rebels fighting Bashar al Assad's regime seized the eastern part of the city. Government forces reclaimed full control of Aleppo on December 22, 2016.

The rocket fire hit a Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) distribution centre in the Hamdaniyah neighbourhood of the city. SARC and the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed the volunteer's death.

"Seven SARC volunteers and staff were also injured, three of them severely," SARC said in a statement.​

Five children were killed on Wednesday when unexploded ordnance detonated in Aleppo's Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, a district recaptured by regime forces in December last year.

Syrian regime forces have carried out operations to clear explosives from formerly rebel-held east Aleppo and authorities have encouraged civilians to return to their homes. Families who fled east Aleppo during the fighting have been returning to devastated neighbourhoods like Bustan al-Qasr to start the slow work of rebuilding.

Syria's war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, made more than half the country's population homeless, and created the world's worst refugee crisis since World War II.