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DAMASCUS, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- A total of 110 people have been killed over the past 24 hours in air raids in Syria's northern city of Aleppo, activists said Thursday.
SkyNews Arabia TV cited activists as saying that 90 civilians had been killed by Russian and Syrian aerial shelling on rebel-held areas in eastern Aleppo.
Another 20 civilians were reportedly killed by shelling that targeted the town of Batabo in the western countryside of Aleppo.
The report said the death toll could likely rise due to the large number of wounded people and the poor medical conditions in the eastern part of Aleppo.
Other activists said that over 50 airstrikes, and 300 artillery shells targeted eastern Aleppo on Thursday.
On the other hand, activists said that the rebels fired over 40 rockets against government forces positions in the city of Sfaira, southeast of Aleppo, and the residential area of 1070 Project, west of the city.
However, Russia has repeatedly denied carrying out airstrikes on Aleppo since last month.
Russian defense ministry claimed that Russian and Syrian jets had not bombed Aleppo for the last 28 days, Interfax news agency reported.
This comes as the Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu said Tuesday that jets from the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier deployed in the eastern Mediterranean had launched their first strikes on Syria in the northwestern province of Idlib and the central city of Homs.
"Today at 10:30 and 11 am (0730 and 0800 GMT), we started a major operation to conduct mass fire damage on the Islamic State and the al-Nusra Front's positions in the Idlib and Homs provinces," Shoigu was quoted as saying by TASS news agency.
"For the first time in our naval history, the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov started taking part in combat," he said on Tuesday.
Shoigu said that the Russian Admiral Grigorovich frigate targeted terrorists in Syria with Kalibr cruise missile strikes.
Idlib has emerged as the main stronghold for the rebels, as the entire province is under their control, except two Shiite towns that are still loyal to the Syrian government.
