DAMASCUS, Syria – The Latest on Syria’s civil war (all times local):

5:15 p.m.

A semi-official Iranian news agency is reporting that several members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard were killed while fighting against militants in northern Syria.

Saturday’s report by the Tasnim news agency quoted a statement from the Revolutionary Guard of Mazandaran province in northern Iran.

Tasnim said the Revolutionary Guard members were killed when a coalition of insurgents, including al-Qaida’s branch in Syria known as the Nusra Front, seized the northern village of Khan Touman from pro-government forces.

The report said “several of the Guard’s members were killed after violation of cease-fire by Takfiri groups and their attack on Khan Touman.” It did not elaborate.

Tasmin was referring to a cease-fire in the northern city of Aleppo that has brought relative calm to the city after two weeks of violence.

___

1:45 p.m.

A senior Iranian official has met with Syria’s President Bashar Assad and vowed continued support for his government in the country’s five-year-old civil war.

Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, met with Assad in Damascus on Saturday.

Syria’s state news agency SANA quoted Velayati as saying that Tehran will always stand by Syria because it “knows that terrorism does not target Syria but the whole people of the region.”

Velayati’s comments came as Russia’s Defence Ministry announced that a cease-fire in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo has been extended by three days starting Saturday.

___

1:40 p.m.

Russia’s military says a fragile cease-fire in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo has been extended for 72 hours and is now in effect until 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday (2101GMT Monday).

The Russian Defence Ministry statement early Saturday says the extension was made at Moscow’s initiative and would also apply to the Latakia region.

Russia and the U.S. last week reached an agreement to extend Syria’s cease-fire to Aleppo. The Syrian military said it would last only 48 hours.

The Russian military accused the Syrian al-Qaida affiliate, known as the Nusra Front, of attempting to destroy the cease-fire by carrying out attacks on Aleppo and trying to impose a blockade on the city from the south.

The Nusra Front and the Islamic State group are not included in the cease-fire.