In northwest Idlib province, 17 people including two children were killed in air strikes which the Observatory said were carried out by either regime or allied Russian warplanes.
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In one air strike, an aid charity claims a field hospital was hit in the town of Ahsem with up to three people killed.
It’s understood Syrian authorities will call another truce on Tuesday but that’s not expected to halt their military campaign on rebel held territories in western Syrian.
Its capture would be a strategic prize for the Assad regime, which controls the major population centres in western Syria, apart from opposition-held areas of Aleppo, and the city of Idlib.
The latest violence came despite the army s announcement Saturday of a 72-hour extension to a nationwide ceasefire that began Wednesday but has produced little respite.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the toll at 38 dead, among them 14 children and 13 women.
The conflict has also seen large parts of the country fall under the control of the Daesh terror group, which in 2014 declared a self-styled “caliphate” in territory under its control in Syria and Iraq.
The city and its suburbs have witnessed intense shelling and fighting over the past few days during which government forces were able to effectively cut the main route into rebel-held neighborhoods.
Syrian state television said eight civilians had been killed and 80 people wounded in shelling by “terrorist groups on residential areas in Aleppo city”. But this week’s advance brings government forces the closest so far to the road, making it even easier to hit. Moscow has sent air forces to Syria for months to support Assad’s regime and quell rebels seeking to remove him from power.
Aid agency Mercy Corps said the latest fighting and the nearly immediate breakdown of the announced ceasefire had further constricted access to Aleppo residents, 75,000 of whom in the east of the city rely on its assistance each month.
Nusra Front said in a statement it had launched an attack in central Aleppo, and had made advances towards a market in a government-held area. Syrian journalist Ahmad Primo said one of the auto bombs was driven by a militant from Ahrar al-Sham, another ultraconservative jihadist group fighting the government.
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The previous 72-hour truce – which was agreed on by rebel alliance the Free Syrian Army but not by other factions including Jabhat al Nusra, the local offshoot of al Qaeda, and the Islamic State – ran until midnight on Friday.
