Russia carries out heaviest strikes in days in Syria's Aleppo

PanARMENIAN.Net - Regime ally Russia carried out its heaviest strikes in days on Syria's Aleppo Tuesday, October 11 as at least five children were killed in rebel fire on a school in the war-torn country's south, AFP reports.

The raids in Aleppo killed at least 12 civilians, a monitor said, and caused massive damage in several residential areas of the city's rebel-held east.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meanwhile cancelled a planned trip to Paris in a row over the violence in Syria, where Moscow is helping President Bashar al-Assad's forces in an operation to recapture all of Aleppo.

Syria's army announced a bid last month to retake the city, which has been divided since mid-2012.

The assault began after the collapse of a short-lived truce negotiated by Washington and Moscow, and has seen the besieged east of the city come under fierce aerial assault.

On October 5, the army said it would reduce its bombardment, after days of bombing that killed hundreds and destroyed the largest remaining hospital in the rebel-held east.

But on Tuesday, an AFP correspondent and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported renewed heavy bombing.

"This is the heaviest Russian bombardment since the Syrian regime announced it would reduce the bombardment" last week, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The 12 dead, among them four children, were killed in raids in the Bustan al-Qasr and Fardos neighbourhoods, the Observatory said.

An AFP correspondent in Bustan al-Qasr saw a multi-storey residential building that had been destroyed, its facade sheared off in the air attack.

Members of the White Helmets rescue force pulled two lifeless toddlers from the building and wrapped them in white sheets.

The Britain-based Observatory -- which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information -- says it determines what planes carried out raids according to their type, location, flight patterns and the munitions involved.