BEIRUT: A missile fired by Syrian regime forces killed at least 18 civilians on Tuesday in a residential neighbourhood of the old quarter of Aleppo city, a monitoring group said.

"The missile struck when people were still inside their homes in the Maghayir district. It killed 18 civilians, including one child, and wounded dozens of others," said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. He said more than 35 homes were destroyed in the attack.

12 trapped in colliery

HARBIN: Twelve miners are trapped in a coal mine in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province after it flooded late on Monday afternoon. The flood inundated the mine in Xing'an District of Hegang City, a major Chinese coal producer, at around 5:00pm, the city government's publicity department told Xinhua. Rescuers are trying to reach the trapped miners.

4,230 evacuated

HAIKOU: Heavy downpours since Sunday in the southernmost island province of Hainan have forced 4,230 people to evacuate, according to local flood control authorities on Tuesday.

Dongfang City was worst hit in the rainstorm with precipitation of more than 500 mm, according to the provincial flood control and drought relief headquarters. An elderly man from Basuo Township went missing in the storm. Some 168,000 people were affected and 4,230 people have been evacuated in Dongfang City, with 18 of its 38 reservoirs discharging flood water.

Journalists missing

MADRID: Three Spanish journalists have gone missing in Syria where they were reporting from the Aleppo region, the president of a Spanish press federation said on Tuesday. Jose Manuel Lopez, Antonio Pampliega and Angel Sastre entered Syria on July 10 "and there has been no news of them since July 12... For the moment we can only call it a disappearance," Elsa Gonzalez, president of the Federation of Press Associations of Spain, told national TV over phone.

Director on terror trial

ROSTOV-ON-DON: A Ukrainian film director went on trial on terror charges in southern Russia on Tuesday after Moscow held him for more than a year in a case decried by Kiev, rights groups and prominent film directors across the globe.Oleg Sentsov, the pro-Kiev filmmaker — along with co-defendant Alexander Kolchenko — is accused of plotting and carrying out "terrorist attacks" on the Crimea peninsula after the region was seized from Ukraine by Russia.