BEIRUT: Soldiers shot dead a child Tuesday in Syria's Aleppo province when troops targeted the car she was in, after a bloody day in which 116 people, including 12 children, were killed, a rights watchdog said.

The young girl was in a car on the motorway that links the northern commercial hub of Aleppo to Damascus after midnight when the attack happened, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"Save the Children," the global children's aid agency, warned on Tuesday that children are being "badly traumatised" after witnessing killings, torture and other atrocities in the brutal conflict that has gripped Syria for 18 months.

The military on Tuesday also resumed its bombardment of Aleppo itself, focusing its fire on the districts of Hanano and Maysar in the east and Kalassa in the southwest of the city, the Britain-based watchdog said.

Since mid-July, the conflict has centred on Aleppo, where rebels of the Free Syrian Army say they control all of the axes around the northern metropolis, and that their only real worry is attacks from regime warplanes.

Elsewhere in the northern province, the army also bombarded the town of Al-Bab, the Observatory said.

In the northwest province of Idlib, once civilian was killed and a number of people were wounded in overnight shelling of the town of Maaret al-Numan.

According to AFP reporters, troops loyal to Damascus have been forced to retreat on many fronts in the northern regions of Aleppo and Idlib, where rebels have captured hundreds of square kilometres (miles) of territory.

On Monday, 116 people -- 69 civilians, 29 soldiers and 18 rebels -- were killed across Syria, according to the Observatory, which gathers its information from a network of activists, medical sources and lawyers on the ground.