Damascus, April 5 (IANS): At least six people were killed and 12 injured Saturday when rebels fired a shell that slammed into a marketplace in the country's central province of Homs, media reported.

The shell struck the al-Tanak marketplace at the Ensha'at neighbourhood in Homs, leaving six people dead and 12 injured, Xinhua reported citing SANA news agency.

In a separate attack, 13 people were injured Saturday when rebels fired 17 mortar shells that slammed into the suburb of Jaramana, east of Syria's capital Damascus.

The recent endless mortar shelling by the rebels is considered as a response to the government troops' wide-scale offensive against rebel-held areas, mainly the eastern countryside of the capital Damascus.

Government troops have recently waged a wide-scale offensive to dislodge the rebels from outlining towns of the capital, mainly from the Eastern al-Ghouta, which consists of mainly agricultural towns that fell in the rebels' hands more than a year ago.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based watchdog group that documents Syria's events, said that two rebel commanders were killed Saturday during the intense battles in the country's northern town of Kassab, in the countryside of the coastal province of Latakia on the borders with Turkey.

The Syrian government claimed that the rebels' battles were driven by foreign jihadis affiliated to Al Qaeda.

The observatory said that another Moroccan was killed a couple of days ago in Kassab, identifying him as Ibrahim Banshaqroun, also known as Abu Ahman al-Maghribi, head of the Sham al-Islam jihadi movement and a previous prisoner in Guantanamo prison.

The observatory said Saturday that the Syrian forces' air strike Friday against the rebel-held al-Sha'ar neighbourhood in the northwestern province of Aleppo killed 19 people.