Over 240 killed in Allepo in five days

At least 246 people, including 73 children, have been killed in five days of Syrian army barrel bombing of rebel-held held areas of second city Aleppo, an NGO said Thursday.

Hundreds more have been wounded in the raids using the controversial unguided munitions, condemned by rights groups as indiscriminate, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The heavy casualty toll has sparked a mass exodus from the worst-hit neighbourhoods in the east of the city, the Britain-based monitoring group added.

The latest series of barrel bomb attacks began on Saturday, with at least 85 people killed in a single day of raids in the eastern part of the city.

Aleppo has been divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since a rebel offensive in mid-2012.