18 killed by Syrian shelling of Aleppo ---- group

No fewer than 18 civilians were killed Tuesday when a ground-to-ground missile struck a rebel-held neighborhood in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, a monitoring group said.

Another 50 were wounded or missing in the city's central Maghawir neighborhood, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, blaming the attack on forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, reports dpa.

Aleppo, Syria's largest city before it was engulfed by fighting in 2012, is divided between government-held western districts and the rebel-held east.

In the Qalamoun region west of the capital Damascus, government forces backed by the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah seized areas outside Zabadani, the last rebel-controlled town in the area.

The Hezbollah military press office said the Syrian army and Hezbollah had taken control of the plain outside the city and a main road.

"This places the city of Zabadani under the full siege of the Syrian army and our resistance fighters," the Hezbollah statement said.

Hezbollah is trying to eliminate rebel and jihadist forces from all areas between the Lebanese border and Damascus.

Zabadani lies 12 kilometres from the border crossing on the Damascus-Beirut highway and about 25 kilometres north-west of the Syrian capital.

Earlier, an opposition court in Damascus warned that blasphemers could the death penalty, the observatory said.

It said the warning was issued in the name of the Southern Damascus Judiciary, which operates in rebel-controlled southern suburbs of the city.

The court said that it had received "thousands of complaints" from residents about an increase in blasphemy "which calls for God's anger against everyone if they do not do all in their power to end it."

Those uttering "words of disbelief" in public would be punished by flogging for a first offence, and the penalty for repeat offenders "could extend to execution", the court said.

Syrian rebel factions, the most powerful of which subscribe to hardline Islamist ideology, have established Islamic law courts in many of the areas they have captured from regime forces.

In some areas, including most rebel-held Damascus suburbs, the courts are to some degree independent and are supported by a range of factions.

The Islamic State extremist group and the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, the al-Nusra Front, have also set up their own courts, which implement harsh versions of Islamic law.

In 2013, unidentified rebels in Aleppo in northern Syria outraged locals by killing a 15-year-old coffee seller, reportedly in front of his parents, over comments which they considered an insult to the prophet Mohammed.

The Syrian conflict, which started when government forces brutally repressed peaceful protests in 2011, has descended into a multi-sided civil war.

Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad are facing off against an array of mainly Islamist rebel groups, while both sides are under attack from the Islamic State extremist group which now controls most of eastern Syria.

Syria's Kurds have carved out an autonomous region in the north of the country and are attacking Islamic State with intensive US-led air support.

In neighbouring Iraq, where the Islamic State has also gained ground, the number of people internally displaced by the conflict has reached 3.1 million, the UN said on Tuesday.

The UN warned that the need for humanitarian aid, especially food, water and shelter, was increasing as temperatures were rising in the region. The country's humanitarian appeal for the year is less than 10 per cent funded.