Violence at worst level since Aleppo

The worst fighting since the battle for eastern Aleppo last year is raging in several regions of Syria, causing hundreds of civilian casualties, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said.

Up to 10 hospitals have been reportedly damaged in the past 10 days, cutting off hundreds of thousands of people from access to healthcare, the aid agency said in a statement on Thursday, voicing alarm at the situation from Raqa to Idlib and eastern Ghouta.

"For the past two weeks, we have seen an increasingly worrying spike in military operations that correlates with high levels of civilian casualties," Marianne Gasser, head of the ICRC's delegation in Syria, said.

"My colleagues report harrowing stories, like a family of 13 who fled Deir Az Zor only to lose 10 of its members to air strikes and explosive devices along the way."

In a separate development on Thursday, two Russian submarines fired 10 "Kalibr" cruise missiles from the Mediterranean Sea at rebel targets in Deir Az Zor province to support the Syrian army, Russian news agencies cited the defence ministry in Moscow as saying.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, recorded the killing of 185 people, including 45 children and 46 women between September 29 and October 4 in several attacks, which it attributed to both the Russian and Syrian governments.  On Thursday, it said Russian air strikes killed 14 people fleeing across a river on rafts in eastern Syria.