Mapigano, milipuko Syria

With sweeping curtains, a chandelier and luxurious sofas, this was once the home of a seemingly well-to-do family in Syria.

But now it is a place of killing, where a rebel sniper was pictured taking aim from the window as his comrades casually lounge around.

The richly-decorated house is in the city of Aleppo, where constant fighting between government forces and rebels is tearing apart the lives of normal citizens.

 A Free Syrian Army fighter fires his sniper rifle from a house in Aleppo

Camouflaged members of the Free Syrian Army are holding positions around Syria's second city to defend it from an assault by troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

But most of the fighters aren't holed up in such comfortable surroundings, and are instead taking cover in the rubble of their shell-hit city.

Damascus has been hit by a wave of explosions in the past months and clashes between government troops and rebels

The civil war has now been raging for 18 months and nearly 20,000 people have been killed - most of them civilians.

In the capital Damascus, Syria's state TV reported today that a bomb attached to a fuel truck has exploded outside a hotel where UN observers are staying in the Syrian capital, wounding at least three people.

 

The station said the explosion took place near a parking lot used by the army command, which is about 300 yards away. None of the wounded were believed to be UN staff.

But according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene, the blast had gone off inside a different parking lot belonging to a military compound near the Dama Rose Hotel, popular with the UN observers in Syria.

A Free Syrian Army sniper looks through the sight on his rifle inside a house in Aleppo

The civil war has now been raging for 18 months and nearly 20,000 people have been killed - most of them civilians

Most of the fighters aren't holed up in such comfortable surroundings, and are instead taking cover in the rubble of their shell-hit city.

Daily Mail