The U.N. struggled on Friday to get a new round of Syrian peace talks off the ground, but with few signs of progress as dozens more civilian deaths underlined the scale of the challenge.

A dozen Syrian rebel factions have suspended talks on new peace negotiations, accusing President Bashar Assad's regime of violating a four-day-old ceasefire with attacks near Damascus that continued Tuesday.

The decision threatens the process sponsored by regime ally Russia and rebel backer Turkey, which began with a truce and is meant to lead to negotiations in the Kazakh capital Astana this month.

The White Helmets, a Syrian civil organization of emergency responders in rebel-held areas, on Thursday won the Right Livelihood Award, the jury for the Swedish human rights prize announced.

A massive bomb blast claimed by the Islamic State group killed at least 44 people and wounded dozens on Wednesday in the Kurdish-majority Syrian city of Qamishli.

It was the largest and deadliest attack to hit the city since the beginning of Syria's conflict in March 2011.

Syrian government air strikes on rebel-held neighborhoods of divided second city Aleppo killed at least 15 civilians on Wednesday, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 10 of the dead came in raids just outside the Al-Bayan hospital in the Shaar neighborhood.

Hariri to Assad: Syrian People Will Be Victorious over Hizbullah, Iran

Head of the Mustaqbal Movement MP Saad Hariri remarked on Tuesday that the Syrian people “will be victorious” against Iran and Hizbullah in the ongoing conflict in their country.

Syrian President Bashar Assad hardened his position on U.N.-sponsored peace talks in his first address to the newly elected parliament broadcast on state television on Tuesday.

"We will not agree to any topic outside the statement of principles we presented to the U.N. We just won't accept it," Assad told lawmakers.

Seventeen civilians including eight children were killed in air strikes on a market in eastern Syria on Monday, the first day of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes on Al-Asharah, a town held by the Islamic State group in Deir Ezzor province, were suspected to have been carried out by either Russian or Syrian government planes.

A humanitarian aid convoy on Wednesday entered the rebel-held Syrian town of Daraya, the Red Cross said, in the first such delivery since a regime siege began in 2012.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said both United Nations and Syrian Arab Red Crescent staff were involved in the delivery.

Thousands of civilians have fled an offensive by the Islamic State group against non-jihadist rebels in northern Syria into territory controlled by a U.S.-backed Kurdish-led alliance, a monitor said on Sunday.

The offensive against the towns of Marea and Azaz threatens to overrun the last swathe of territory in the east of Aleppo province held by non-jihadist rebels and bring IS to the doorstep of the Kurdish enclave of Afrin.