Simultaneous car bombings killed more than 50 civilians and left a trail of destruction in a town near Syria’s capital yesterday, as rebels downed a second military aircraft in as many days.
Two pilots usedparachutes to jumpout after it was hit
The explosives-packed cars blew up at daybreak in a pro-regime neighbourhood of the mainly Christian and Druze town of Jaramana, residents, state media and a rights watchdog reported.
The blasts ripped through a central square near a petrol station, one going off as a bomb-laden car was driven against the traffic down a main road lined by many people. There was a ball of fire at the end of a narrow lane, and the impact of the explosions brought walls down onto cars. Pools of blood and severed body parts were left behind on the streets, said an AFP photographer.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gave a death toll of 54, all civilians. More than 120 other people were wounded, and many residents rushed with them to hospital.
The foreign ministry in Russia, a longtime ally of Damascus, strongly condemned the bombings as a “terrorist crime.”
Jaramana has now been targeted by four such bomb attacks in three months. It is home to predominantly Christians and Druze, an influential minority whose faith is an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Sectarian divides are a key factor in Syria’s armed rebellion, with many in theSunni Muslim majority frustrated at more than 40 years of Alawite-dominated rule.
At least another 31 people — on top of the 54 who died in Jaramana – were killed in violence across Syria yesterday, according to the Observatory.
Also, a car-bomb attack struck Basra al-Sham, in the southwestern province of Daraa, the Observatory said, without providing a precise casualty toll.
“A huge explosion hit the town,” said the Observatory. “It was caused by a car-bomb attack. The explosion was followed by the sound of clashes. There were reports of casualties.”
An AFP correspondent on the Syria-Turkey border, meanwhile, reported that rebel fighters shot down a fighter jet in the embattled northwest. The aircraft was hit by a missile and crashed at Daret Ezza, said the Observatory, a Britain-based watchdog that relies on a network of activists and medics on the ground. Witnesses said the rebels later captured one of the pilots.
“Two pilots used parachutes to jump out of the plane after it was hit,” a witness told an AFP reporter one kilometre (less than a mile) away in Tourmanin. “One of them was taken prisoner.”
The rebels were seen carrying him and taunting Assad in YouTube videos. “This is your airplane, oh Bashar,” a man said in one video as fire and smoke rose from the mass of broken metal. “The (rebel) Free Syrian Army has downed it.”
It came a day after rebels downed an army helicopter for the first time with a newly acquired ground-to-air missile.