Thousands of people are fleeing fighting and Turkish shelling and bombardment of the Kurdish Afrin region in northwestern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday.
The Britain-based war monitor, citing unidentified sources, said Syrian government forces were preventing people fleeing Afrin from crossing government-held checkpoints into Kurdish-held districts of Aleppo city.
Syrian government officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
The city of Afrin, located in a Kurdish-controlled area of northwestern Syria, is around 50 km (30 miles) from Aleppo city, a mostly government-held city where Kurdish militia control the Sheikh Maqsoud district.
