Moscow: Russia on Tuesday denied its planes had conducted air strikes overnight against the Syrian rebel-held city of Idlib, which the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said had killed 23 people.

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"Russian planes did not carry out any combat missions, to say nothing of any air strikes, in the province of Idlib," Igor Konashenkov, a Russian Defence Ministry spokesman, said in a statement.

The Observatory had earlier said the air strikes targeted a number of positions in the city, one of them next to a hospital. Seven children were among the dead, Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman said.

The Turkish foreign ministry said the strikes had killed more than 60 civilians and complained in a statement about what it said were the "indefensible" crimes of the Russian and Syrian governments.

Konashenkov called the Observatory`s allegations "a horror story" of the kind he said it had disseminated in the past and said such pronouncements should be regarded with greater scepticism.

Idlib is a stronghold of rebel groups including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.