Syrian civil war: Russian jets suspected of killing at least 30 people after bombing residential buildings near Damascus

At least four bombs also wounded more than 40

Suspected Russian jets have killed at least 30 people, including 11 women and a child, and wounded dozens more in bombing raids on a besieged rebel enclave east of the Syrian capital, residents and a war monitor said.

At least four bombs flattened two buildings in the Eastern Ghouta town of Misraba, in an attack that killed around 20 and wounded more than 40 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and civil defence sources said.

Elsewhere in Eastern Ghouta, the last major rebel enclave near Damascus, at least ten people were killed in aerial strikes in other nearby towns, the Observatory, rescuers and residents said.

The Observatory, a war monitor based in Britain, said 11 women and a child were among the dead in the strikes in Misraba, which it said were carried out by Russian planes.

It said the death toll is expected to rise as some of the wounded are in a critical condition.

Video footage posted by activists on social media showed rescue workers pulling women and children from the rubble. The footage could not be independently confirmed.

Backed by Russian strikes, government forces have escalated military operations against Eastern Ghouta in recent months, seeking to tighten a siege that residents and aid workers say is a deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war, a charge the government denies.

The rebel assault aims partly to relieve that pressure.

Jets have pounded rebel-held Harasta when rebels this week overran a major base in the heart of the enclave which residents say the army uses to pound residential areas.

The United Nations says about 400,000 civilians besieged in the region face "complete catastrophe"€ because aid deliveries by the government were blocked and hundreds of people who need urgent medical evacuation have not been allowed outside the enclave.

Russia rejects opposition and human rights groups' accusations its jets have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians since its major intervention two years ago that turned the tide in favour of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Scores of hospitals and civil defence centres have been bombed in what the opposition said is a "scorched earth policy" to paralyse life in rebel-held areas.

Moscow asserts it only attacks hardline Islamists.