Syrian airforce jets killed at least 48 civilians in strikes on the capital Damascus, its eastern Ghouta suburb, in the central city of Talbisseh and the southern city of Hara, including 16 children, a monitor said Friday.
Twenty-six of the civilians were killed in Damascus and one-third of them were children, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
At least 11 civilians including four children, were killed in Talbisseh, eleven civilians were killed in the Islamist rebel stronghold of Ghouta, and four children in Hara.
Operations by the forces of president Bashar al-Assad have killed far more Syrian civilians than any other force in the country, according to activists, analysts, and monitoring groups.
Between January and July, government forces killed 7,894 civilians, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (a group critical of Assad), compared to 1,131 killed by the Islamic State militant group and 734 by armed opposition groups.
In October, the first month of its bombing campaign against IS, Russia killed between 255 to 375 non-combatants, according to Airwaves, a watchdog that studies casualty reports from Syria and Iraq.
Air raids by the 13-nation US-led coalition fighting IS have killed between 682 and 977 civilians since they began in August 2014, according to Airwars.
Russian strikes are killing civilians roughly 10 times faster than the US-led coalition, according to the group.
