Aleppo bleeds on despite 'truce'

Fresh fighting hit Syria's Aleppo yesterday, the first day of a promised Russian aid window the UN said was insufficient to bring relief for the city's desperate residents.

Even as Moscow pledged to pause strikes around the divided second city, it carried out raids further east on the Islamic State group bastion of Raqa that a monitor said killed 24 civilians and wounding 70 more.

Russia was meanwhile offered the possibility of joint operations against IS by Turkey, which has backed rebel groups against President Bashar al-Assad.

The offer came one day after crucial talks between President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan aimed at ending a crisis in ties.

A longtime ally of Damascus, Russia has provided air cover for pro-government forces for nearly a year, including in the escalating battle for Aleppo.

The city has been rocked by a recent surge in violence, with residents on both sides of the front line living in fear of being trapped by renewed hostilities.

The United Nations said Russia was considering expanding three-hour pauses in fighting every morning to bring in desperately-needed aid.

"Any pause obviously should always be seen and looked at with great interest, because a pause means no fighting, but three hours is not enough," said UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura.

But rebels and regime forces clashed in southern Aleppo yesterday, including during the period when the pause was meant to take hold, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Rebels and jihadists broke a three-week government siege of the city's east on Saturday, opening a new route for goods through the southern outskirts.

AFP's correspondent in the east said trucks carrying food were unable to enter the city because of intense bombardment. An estimated 1.5 million people live in Aleppo, including about 250,000 in rebel-held districts.

Syrian's state news agency said army troops seized territory south of Aleppo yesterday, adding that rebel fire killed four civilians in a government-held district.

But it made no mention of the "humanitarian windows" announced by Russia.

Activists accused government forces on Wednesday of carrying out an attack using chlorine gas on a rebel-held residential neighbourhood in Aleppo.

Rescue workers said a mother and her two children were killed in the bombing, with toddlers and young children among those pictured being given emergency treatment and oxygen masks in hospital.

A senior Russian senator yesterday said Moscow was planning to expand its Hmeimim airbase on Syria's coast into a permanent facility.

"After its legal status is agreed upon, Hmeimim will become a Russian military base. The appropriate infrastructure will be built and our servicemen will live in worthy conditions," Frants Klintsevich, the deputy head of Russia's senate committee for defence, told Izvestia newspaper.

Syria's conflict erupted in March 2011 and has since killed more than 290,000 people and drawn in world powers on all sides of the war.