Syrian army helicopters dropped barrel bombs on main northern city Aleppo today, killing at least eight people as they pressed a bombing campaign launched in mid-December, a monitoring group said.
More than 150 people have been killed in Syria's onetime economic hub over the past four days, in a string of barrel bomb raids and other air strikes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The raids have prompted mass exoduses from several rebel-held neighbourhoods in the east of the city.
Five children were among those killed when barrel bombs hit a mosque in the Masakan Hanano district today, the Britain-based Observatory said.
The Aleppo Media Centre said the mosque was being used as a school.
Yesterday, 30 people were killed in barrel bomb attacks and other air strikes, among them 13 children and three women, the Observatory said. Air raids on Saturday killed 85 people.
Civilians trying to flee the bombing campaign have found many escape routes from the city made perilous by fierce fighting between the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and other rebel groups.
Some have made it to the Turkish border. Others have sought refuge in government-held areas of Aleppo, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.
The Aleppo Media Centre said "people are fleeing in large numbers."
Some neighbourhoods "have become like ghost towns, with shops closed and residents leaving their homes."
The bombing campaign has accompanied ground assaults by government forces that have seen them recapture some territory south and east of Syria's second city, including the international airport, in recent months.
Aleppo has been divided since the rebels captured large swathes of the city in an offensive in the summer of 2012. Much of its historic Old City has been levelled in the fighting.
