DAMASCUS  - Turkey and the United States lashed out against the Syrian regime after the death toll from a missile strike on Aleppo rose to 58, while a French photographer wounded in the conflict was confirmed dead on Sunday."Every day a large number of innocent children and women fall dead in Syria," Turkey's PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on a visit to the United Arab Emirates. "We will not remain silent on those committing crimes against their people... We will not remain silent on the brutal dictator in Syria."On Sunday alone, according to a toll compiled by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 63 people were killed in violence across the country.Erdogan's statement came as the French foreign ministry confirmed that freelance photographer Olivier Voisin, who was seriously wounded in Syria on Thursday, died of his wounds after surgery in Turkey. Meanwhile the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, updated its death toll from a missile attack on Friday on the northern city of Aleppo, saying it killed at least 58 people, among them 36 children.Washington on Saturday condemned the Assad regime "in the strongest possible terms" for the strike, which activists say was carried out using surface-to-surface missiles. The army's deadly missile strikes were "the latest demonstrations of the Syrian regime's ruthlessness and its lack of compassion for the Syrian people it claims to represent", said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland. She repeated Washington's call for Assad to step down. "The Assad regime has no legitimacy and remains in power only through brute force," Nuland said.The comments from Washington came after a statement from the main opposition Syrian National Coalition announcing a boycott of talks with world powers. Coalition chief Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib said the group's withdrawal from meetings abroad was "a message of protest to all governments of the world" who were merely looking on as the Syrian people were being killed.In Paris, a foreign ministry spokeswoman confirmed that Voisin, 38, had died, after he suffered head and arm injuries from shrapnel when a shell exploded near the northwest Idlib.Violence meanwhile raged in several Syrian flashpoints, according to the Observatory. In northern Syria, rebels closed in on a police academy in the town of Khan al-Assal in Aleppo, as warplanes bombarded their positions there, the watchdog said. The army also used tanks to shell the Tariq al-Bab district in eastern Aleppo city, the Observatory said, just two days after dropping three powerful missiles there.German Chancellor Angela Merkel also arrived on a two-day visit to Turkey where she will discuss Ankara's bid to join the European Union and the conflict in Syria, national media reported. The Anatolia news agency said Merkel had touched down in the southern city of Gaziantep from where she was scheduled to travel to Kahramanmaras to visit German troops who have been stationed there since January. The 300 German soldiers are operating Patriot missiles as part of a Nato mission to protect the Turkish border from any spillover of the conflict in neighbouring Syria.