Syrian Government airstrikes killed dozens of civilians in the city of Aleppo and nearby areas on Friday as the UN Security Council is set to discuss emergency aid drops to besieged areas, The Daily Star reports.
The raids were the most intense in more than a week, with dozens of barrel bombs targeting several rebel-held eastern districts of the city, according to an AFP correspondent.
The civil defense authority said ten people were killed when a bus they were travelling in was hit on the Castello road, a key rebel supply route out of Aleppo.
Twenty-eight other civilians were killed in government strikes on a number of neighborhoods in the rebel-held east of the city, said the civil defense, known as the White Helmets.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Castello road was now "effectively cut."
"All movement is targeted, be that buses or bystanders," its head Rami Abdel-Rahman said.
Almost 600,000 people are estimated to live under siege in Syria, most of them encircled by forces of President Bashar Assad's government, whose approval the United Nations says is needed to deliver aid by air.
Last month the UN said that if it did not see an improvement on aid access to besieged areas by June 1, it would task its food agency to carry out drops.