Syrian and Russian aircraft step up bombing of Aleppo city – monitor

Nearly 50 strikes hit rebel-held areas in and around the Syrian city of Aleppo on Sunday 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.

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.

“This week-long campaign of bombing is very intense and day by day it’s getting worse .. it is the worst we have seen in a while,” said Bebars Mishal, a civil defence official in rebel-held Aleppo.

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

The city, which has been divided for years between rebel and government-held zones, has seen many deadly bombardments that have all but destroyed a February ceasefire agreement.