Syria, Russia step up bombing of Aleppo

Nearly 50 strikes hit rebel-held areas in and around the Syrian city of Aleppo yesterday in some of the heaviest raids recently by Russian and Syrian government aircraft, residents and a monitor said.

For their part, rebels also hit government-held areas of Aleppo in what Syrian media said was an escalation in mortar attacks on the western districts of what was the country's largest city before the war.

State media said missiles fired on Hamadaniyah, Midan and other neighbourhoods by insurgents left at least twenty dead, mostly civilians, in the second day of intense shelling of government-held areas, which had left at least 24 dead on Saturday.

In the rebel-held eastern sector of the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said dozens of barrel bombs - oil drums or cylinders packed with explosives and shrapnel- were dropped by military helicopters on several densely populated districts, reports Reuters.

A civil defence worker said at least 32 people were killed in the rebel-held parts of the city, with eighteen bodies alone pulled out of the rubble of flattened buildings in the Qatrji neighbourhood, the worst hit.

The aerial raids yesterday came in the wake of Friday's strikes on civilian areas that residents said were the most intense in over a month.

Meanwhile, US-backed Syrian fighters advancing on the Islamic State group in the strategic northern town of Manbij have progressed to within five kilometres of the jihadist bastion, a monitor said yesterday.

Supported by air strikes by the US-led coalition battling IS in Syria and Iraq, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias launched an assault last week on Manbij, reports AFP.

"The Syrian Democratic Forces are now within about five kilometres of the strategic city of Manbij," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.

Manbij is located along a route connecting Raqa -- the IS group's de facto capital in Syria -- to the Turkish border, a vital conduit for supplies and foreign fighters.

At least 74 people have died in the fighting since the start of the offensive last Monday, including 32 civilians mainly killed as a result of coalition air strikes, said the Observatory, which relies on a network of medics and activists to monitor the conflict.