Suicide car bomb kills 68 children
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NEARLY 70 children were among those killed when a suicide car bomb tore through buses carrying evacuees from besieged government-held towns in Syria, a monitor said yesterday.
Saturday’s blast hit a convoy carrying residents from the northern towns of Foua and Kfraya as they waited at a transit point in rebel-held Rashidin, west of Aleppo.
At least 68 children were among the 126 people killed in the attack, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, updating a previous toll of 112 dead.
At least 109 of the dead were evacuees, the Britain-based monitoring group said, while the rest were aid workers and rebels guarding the convoy.
The evacuations were taking place under a deal between Syria’s government and rebels that is also seeing residents and rebels transported out of Madaya and Zabadani, towns near Damascus which are surrounded by pro-government forces.
The agreement is the latest in a string of evacuation deals, which the government of President Bashar Assad says are the best way to end the violence after more than six years of civil war.
Rebels say they amount to forced relocation after years of bombardment and crippling sieges.
Body parts and the belongings of evacuees — including clothes, dishes and even televisions — were still strewn at the scene of the attack yesterday, reporters said.
The shattered buses were nearby as was the shell of a pick-up truck — with little left but its engine block — that was apparently used to carry out the bombing.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, though the key Ahrar al-Sham rebel group denied any involvement. The government blamed “terrorists” — a catch-all term for its opponents.
The Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria to monitor the conflict, said hundreds of people were also wounded in the blast.
It said a petrol station at the transit point was caught up in the explosion, adding to the number of victims.
The Syrian Red Crescent said three of its workers were among the wounded.
Maysa al-Aswad, a 30-year-old evacuee from Kfraya, said she was sitting on one of the buses with her 6-month-old son Hadi and 10-year-old daughter Narjis when the blast shook the parked convoy.
“Hadi was on my lap and Narjis on a chair next to me. When the explosion happened I hugged them both and we fell to the floor,” she said.
“I didn’t know what was happening, all I could hear was people crying and shouting,” she said. “All I can think about is how we survived all the death during the last few years and then could have died just after we finally escaped.”
More than 5,000 people left Foua and Kfraya and about 2,200 left Madaya and Zabadani on Friday, the latest in a series of evacuations from the four towns.
The evacuation process resumed after the bombing, the Observatory said, with the residents of Foua and Kfraya eventually arriving in Aleppo, Syria’s second city which the government gained full control of last year.
Wounded survivors, including many children, were taken for treatment at an Aleppo hospital.
UN aid chief Stephen O’Brien condemned the bombing, saying in a statement: “The perpetrators of such a monstrous and cowardly attack displayed a shameless disregard for human life.”
He said that while the UN was not involved in the transfer it was ready to “scale up our support to evacuees.”
He called on all parties to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law, and to “facilitate safe and unimpeded access for the UN and its partners to bring life-saving help to those in need.”
Pope Francis yesterday also urged an end to the war in Syria as he presided over the traditional Easter mass in Rome.
The pontiff said he hoped that Jesus Christ’s sacrifice might help bring “comfort and relief to the civil population in Syria, prey to a war that continues to sow horror and death.”
The residents and rebels from Madaya and Zabadani arrived late Saturday in rebel-held territory in Idlib province.
The evacuation deal had been brokered by Qatar, a supporter of Syrian opposition forces, and Iran, a key government ally.
Shiite-dominated Iran has repeatedly raised concerns for the residents of Foua and Kfraya, who are mainly Shiites and were besieged by Sunni rebels.
Syria’s war has left more than 320,000 people dead since erupting in 2011, with more than half the population forced from their homes and hundreds of thousands trapped under siege.
Residents of Madaya and Zabadani joined the 2011 uprising against Assad.
Both came under government siege in the ensuing civil war.
Residents of Foua and Kfraya have lived under a steady hail of rockets and mortars for years, but were supplied with food and medicine through military airdrops.
Critics say the string of evacuations, which could see some 30,000 people moved across battle lines over the next 60 days, amounts to forced displacement along political and sectarian lines.
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