Heavy shelling and fighting erupted across swathes of Syria's second city of Aleppo on Tuesday, as both the regime and rebels claimed they were gaining ground in the key northern battleground.

At least 24 people were reported killed nationwide, among them women and children in Aleppo, as the regime pressed its onslaught on rebel areas a day after President Obama warned Damascus over its chemical weapons arsenal.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reacted by bluntly telling the West not to meddle in Syria, but also criticised the regime for failing to do enough to end a conflict that has exposed deep rifts among world powers.

On the ground, and heavy shelling was reported in Aleppo, including an area where a Japanese journalist was killed after being caught up in gunfire on Monday, while war planes bombarded the northern town of Marea, activists said.

The rebel Free Syrian Army said Tuesday it controlled almost two thirds of Aleppo, which has been battered by a month of air strikes, shelling and fighting, but a security source in Damascus rejected the claims.

Activists also reported that troops had stormed a town near Damascus, torching homes and shops, while helicopters and war planes strafed several suburbs of the capital, which the regime claimed to have largely recaptured last month.

The death of Japanese female reporter Mika Yamamoto, 45, brought to four the number of foreign journalists killed in Syria since the uprising erupted against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three other journalists -- a Lebanese woman, an Arab male and a Turkish national -- were missing.

Obama had put Assad's regime on notice Monday that although he had not ordered military intervention "at this point," the United States was "monitoring the situation very carefully," and had drawn up contingency plans.

"There would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons... That would change my calculations significantly," he told reporters.

Obama said the United States would regard any recourse by Damascus to its deadly arsenal as crossing a "red line".

Syria's admission in July that it has chemical weapons and could use them in case of any "external aggression" added a dangerous dimension to a conflict that has now killed at least 23,000 people, according to the Observatory.

But Lavrov, whose government is one of the regime's few remaining allies, said Tuesday: "There should be no interference from the outside...The only thing that foreign players should do is create conditions for the start of dialogue."

The UN Security Council has so far failed to agree on action to contain the bloodshed or deal with the increasingly embattled Assad after Russia and China both vetoed resolutions on the conflict.

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