Regime forces targeted the city’s opposition-held Tishreen district with 20 missiles, Khaled Sherif, a pro-opposition civil defense official in the capital’s Eastern Ghouta area, said late Wednesday.

The attack, which came one day before scheduled peace talks in Geneva, violates a ceasefire deal brokered by Turkey and Russia that went into effect last December. 

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the regime of Bashar al-Assad cracked down on pro-democracy protests -- which erupted as part of the “Arab Spring” uprisings -- with unexpected ferocity.  

Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to UN figures.

Some observers, however, believe the total death toll from the conflict to be much higher.