Reuters
Nearly 50 air strikes hit rebel-held areas in and around the Syrian city of Aleppo on Sunday in some of the heaviest recent raids by Russian and Syrian government aircraft, residents and a monitoring group said.
The group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, also said an unidentified war plane had crashed in countryside south of Aleppo, in an area where Islamist rebel fighters are battling the Syrian army and Iranian-backed forces. It had no information on what caused the crash.
A civil defense worker said at least 32 people were killed in the rebel-held parts of the city during the air strikes, with 18 bodies pulled from flattened buildings in the Qatrji neighborhood, the worst hit.
The monitor said dozens of barrel bombs - oil drums or cylinders packed with explosives and shrapnel- were dropped by helicopter on densely populated districts.
"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 defense official in rebel-held Aleppo.
Aleppo, the country's largest city before the war, has been divided for years between rebel and government-held zones.
Full control of Aleppo would be a huge prize for President Bashar al-Assad. Russia's military intervention since September has helped to bolster Assad's government.
In the northwestern province of Idlib, meanwhile, residents said Syrian and Russian jets bombed the rebel-held provincial capital, setting fire to a bustling market in the heart of the city. More than 30 people were injured, at least three killed and dozens were unaccounted for, according to an activist contacted in the city.
The Idlib strikes came just days after some of the heaviest raids on residential areas for months, killing more than 30 people and injuring dozens on May 31. Idlib has been a relative haven for thousands of displaced Syrians .
The air raids in Aleppo on Sunday came in the wake of strikes on civilian areas on Friday that residents said were the most intense in over a month.
The Syrian Observatory said the Syrian government raids had targeted the main Castello road that leads into rebel-held Aleppo as part of a campaign to complete the encirclement of the city's insurgent-dominated areas.
Rebels say Russian jets on Sunday pounded insurgent positions in the area to prevent them from advancing towards the nearby town of Hader, which rebels say is a stronghold of Iranian-backed militias.