Nine dead in strike on school as fighting intensifies

Five chilcren were killed Sunday and at least 35 civilians on Saturday as government forces and rebel fighters exchanged fire in Syria's main northern city of Aleppo.

On Sunday, a government airstrike hit a school in Alleppo killing nine civilians, including five children, according to a monitoring group

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights – an opposition-linked UK-based monitor – said three teachers were also among the dead.

"Military aircraft struck a school in east Aleppo city and killed five children, three female teachers and one man," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. 

He said a number of people were seriously wounded and the death toll was likely to rise. 

Earlier Sunday, the observatory released a statement on Saturday's victims, including from oppositon fire. Saturday's dead counted 18 civilians, including two children, killed in regime air strikes on al-Maadi and Sheikh al-Lutfi, two rebel-held neighbourhoods in east Aleppo.

"Seventeen other civilians were killed when rebel groups fired rockets on neighbourhoods controlled by the regime, including Suleimaniyah and other areas," the UK-based group said.

That account was disputed by Ahmed Hassan Mohammad director of the opposition news website Syria 24, who told al-Araby al-Jadeed only Syrian army missiles could have wrought that kind of damage on the Christian majority neighbourhood of al-Sulaimaniyah. He argued that the opposition does not have such effective weapons. 

Pictures circulating on social media depicted significant damage.

The Syrian regime has been bombing the northern Syrian city of Aleppo for several months. Dozens of barrel bombs have been dropped on the neighbourhoods of al-Maadi, al-Farous, Jab al-Qubba, Sayf al-Dawla and Bab al-Nayrab.