DAMASCUS • A total of 110 people have been killed since Wednesday in air raids in Syria's northern city of Aleppo, activists said yesterday.

SkyNews Arabia TV cited activists as saying 90 civilians had been killed by Russian and Syrian shelling of rebel-held areas in eastern Aleppo over a 24-hour period, Xinhua news agency reported.

Another 20 civilians were reportedly killed by shelling that targeted the town of Batabo in the western countryside of Aleppo.

The report said the death toll could likely rise. Other activists said that more than 50 air strikes and 300 artillery shells targeted eastern Aleppo yesterday.

Activists also said rebels fired more than 40 rockets against government positions in the city of Sfaira, south-east of Aleppo, and the residential area of 1070 Project in south-western Aleppo.

Air strikes pounded neighbourhoods around a children's hospital and a blood bank in rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Wednesday in a second day of renewed bombing, a war monitor, medics and emergency workers said.

The air raids formed part of a wider military escalation by the Syrian government and allies including Russia, which fired coordinated volleys of missiles at rebels on Tuesday and for the first time used its only aircraft carrier. Russia has denied carrying out air strikes on Aleppo since last month. Its Defence Ministry said Russian and Syrian jets had not bombed Aleppo for the past 28 days, Interfax news agency reported.

Separately, 25 fighters and civilians were killed in a car-bomb attack targeting Syrian rebels in Aleppo yesterday, a rebel group said.

The Nureddine al-Zinki group's senior official Yasser Yusef told Agence France-Presse that the attack in the town of Azaz "bore the hallmarks" of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria militant group.