Syrian shelling of rebel-held areas close to Turkey kills 4

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian opposition activists say government shelling of a rebel-held town near the border with Turkey killed four people and wounded more than a dozen. Saturday’s shelling of the town of Sarmada comes amid increasing tensions in the last rebel stronghold in the Syrian northwest. A truce reached in March last year has been repeatedly violated in recent weeks. The rebel-held region is home to about 4 million people, many of them displaced by Syria’s 10-year conflict. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitoring group, said three of the dead in Sarmada were local policemen whose station received a direct hit.