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Eleven children were killed on Thursday in a barrel bomb attack carried out by government forces on a rebel-held neighbourhood of Syria's Aleppo city.

"Fifteen civilians, among them 11 children, were killed in a barrel bomb attack on the Bab al-Nayrab neighbourhood" in the south of Aleppo city, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

The group also reported eight civilians, including two children, were killed on Thursday in rebel fire on the government-held west of the city.

An AFP journalist in Bab al-Nayrab saw rescue workers and civilians digging through the rubble of collapsed buildings.

One man carried out the lifeless body of a baby no bigger than his forearm. The baby's eyes were closed and its body was white with dust except for speckles and smears of blood.

Elsewhere, a civil defence worker protected the face of another dead child as his colleagues scraped away the rubble encasing the rest of the child's body.

Syria's regime has been accused of regularly using barrel bombs – crude, explosive devices – on rebel-held areas that are home to civilians, and other parties to the conflict are not known to have used the weapons.

President Bashar al-Assad and his government deny using barrel bombs.

Once Syria's economic powerhouse, Aleppo city has been ravaged by the conflict that began with anti-government protests in March 2011.

The city has been roughly divided between rebel control in the east and government control in the west since mid-2012, with each side bombarding the other and causing civilian casualties.

More than 290,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began, according to the Observatory.