A pregnant woman and three children were among 18 civilians killed when Syrian rebels shelled a Kurdish neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo, a monitor said Wednesday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 70 people, including 30 children, were also wounded in Tuesday's attack, adding that the shelling was a violation of a ceasefire agreement.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will next week inaugurate a new center for Syrian refugees in the southeastern Turkish city of Kilis built with EU funds, Turkey's prime minister said Tuesday.

"We are going to inaugurate a school and a hospital built in Kilis thanks to EU financing with European leaders led by Mrs. Merkel," said Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in a speech to his ruling party in parliament.

The first Syrians arrived in Germany from Istanbul on Monday under a controversial EU-Turkey migrant pact, an official from the German federal refugee office told AFP.

The 16 asylum seekers flew into the northern city of Hanover and were to be taken to a shelter about 140 kilometers (90 miles) away. A second group of Syrians was to arrive in Hanover in the early afternoon, the official added.

"Daddy, where are you now? In Turkey or Sweden?" a Syrian girl asks her father in her first voice message to him since he joined hundreds of thousands fleeing the war.

The recording, sent by smartphone, is one of many messages between Syrians that Jordanian photographer Tanya Habjouqa has compiled into her short film "Syria Via WhatsApp".

Turkey on Saturday vehemently rejected accusations by Amnesty International that it was forcibly returning Syrian refugees to the conflict-torn country, as Ankara prepares to take back, under an EU deal, Syrians who traveled illegally to Greece.

"The allegations do not reflect reality in any way," the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement. "It is sad that this kind of news was shared with the public (by the media) in such an intense way," it added.

Syria's antiquities chief said on Monday that his department would need five years to restore the ancient ruins of Palmyra damaged by the Islamic State jihadist group.

"If we have UNESCO's approval, we will need five years to restore the structures damaged or destroyed by IS," Maamoun Abdulkarim told Agence France Presse.

Syrian troops backed by Russian ground and air forces on Saturday pushed deeper into the Islamic State group stronghold of Palmyra, as Washington considered boosting its anti-jihadist fight in neighboring Iraq.

IS, behind a string of attacks in the West including this week's Brussels bombings, is under growing pressure from Syrian and Iraqi military offensives to retake two key bastions in its self-proclaimed "caliphate".

The Syrian army recaptured on Friday the citadel of Palmyra from the Islamic State group, nearly a year after the jihadists overran the ancient city, state television said citing a military source.

"Our armed forces, in coordination with the popular defense forces, have taken control of the ancient Palmyra citadel after inflicting many losses in the ranks of the terrorist group Daesh," the report said, using another name for IS.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Moscow on Wednesday seeking to gauge whether Vladimir Putin is ready to discuss ways to ease Bashar Assad from power in Syria.

American officials see movement on Assad's future as key to giving momentum to the peace talks being led by U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura in Geneva to end Syria's civil war.

Turkey has detained a Japanese citizen in the south of the country on suspicion of seeking to cross the border into Syria to join Islamic State (IS) jihadists, the Dogan news agency said on Wednesday.

The young man aged 24, named as M.M., was detained late on Tuesday in the Nizip district of the southern city of Gaziantep, close to the Syrian border.