WHO says 338 killed in eastern Aleppo in past few weeks

The fighting in Syria's besieged enclave of eastern Aleppo has killed 338 people in the past few weeks, including 106 children, a senior World Health Organis ation official has said.

The organisation said 846 have been injured, including 261 children,

“We are asking for four things: stop the killing, stop attacks on health care, let the sick and wounded out and let the aid in,” WHO’s head of emergency risk management and humanitarian response told a UN briefing in Geneva on Friday.

Seperately, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Russian air strikes have killed more than 9,000 people in war-torn Syria in the past year.

The Syrian opposition monitoring group said on Friday the victims include both civilians and fighters, among them rebel groups as well as militants from the Islamic State group and an al Qaeda-linked faction.

On September 30th last year, Russia began an air campaign backing forces of the Syrian President Bashar Assad and turning the balance of power in his favour.

Meanwhile, Syrian government forces and rebels waged fierce battles north of Aleppo on Friday, a week into a Russian-backed offensive by the Syrian army to take the entire city.

Syrian government forces made a significant advance on Thursday north of Aleppo, capturing the Handarat refugee camp, a few kilometres from the city. There were conflicting accounts on the outcome of the fighting.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government forces had built on the Handarat advance and captured the adjacent Kindi Hospital area on Friday morning, edging closer to the city.

A television station operated by Lebanon's Hizbullah, which is fighting in support of the government, also said the Kindi Hospital area had been captured.

But rebel sources denied that the government had captured the Kindi Hospital area, saying fighting was still going on.

A senior rebel official also said that government forces were shelling the rebel-held districts with artillery from a hilltop to the east of the city.