Activists in besieged rebel-held east Aleppo say Russian-backed air strikes on the neighbourhood have resumed after a three-week moratorium.
Three people had been reported killed at around midday on Tuesday, the Aleppo Media Centre said, in "barrel bomb" strikes which hit five different neighbourhoods inside the regime siege barricades.
The reports have not been independently verified, but rebel activists sent audio and video recordings in which the sound of warplanes thundering overhead can clearly be heard.
City officials and the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights usually report total casualties and injured figures at the end of day.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been expected to resume what is seen as a "final push" to quash rebel resistance in east Aleppo since government forces managed to cut rebel supply lines in July.
Ferocious Russian and Syrian strikes bombarded the area for five weeks in attacks which sparked international condemnation, stopping on 18 October when Russia declared a moratorium to allow the 250,000 trapped civilians to leave under the terms of an amnesty.
Both sides accused the other of targeting checkpoints with sniper and mortar fire, meaning very few people managed to cross into government-held West Aleppo.
The fragile peace appears to have ended. Activists said they were sent text messages from the government in the early hours of Sunday to evacuate before a “strategically planned assault using high precision weapons occurs within 24 hours,” and artillery shelling on Sunday night reportedly targeted Fardous and Salheen neighbourhoods, killing at least six people, including a five-year-old girl.
A renewed ground offensive is also expected.
Also on Tuesday, the Russian Defence Ministry announced the launch of a major campaign in Homs and Idlib provinces, after a huge deployment of cruise missile-carrying ships and submarines docked at a naval base on the Syrian coast.
Rebel-held Idlib, which neighbours Aleppo, was not part of the moratorium, and has seen relentless bombing in the past few weeks including a strike on a school which killed 22 children.
At least 100 civilians in west Aleppo have also been killed by rebel rockets launched at the government-controlled territory in a recently failed counterattack designed to break the siege.
The divided city has been the scene of intense fighting since 2012.
Last week the UN warned that residents in opposition neighbourhoods will starve this winter unless urgently needed aid is allowed in, and the organisation’s special envoy to Syria, Staffan di Mistura, has previously warned that the entire area could be “destroyed by Christmas” if the intensity of previous bombing continues.
