A Syrian air strike on a rebel bastion in the north yesterday flattened a string of houses and killed 30 people including children, activists said, leaving residents wailing in grief and anger.
“Bashar did this. God help us, these animals will kill us all,” said one man, hoisting a bloodied arm from a pile of body parts on the pavement outside the hospital in Aazaz after the bombardment.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 30 people were killed in the attack by a MiG fighter jet, the latest atrocity blamed on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, but the toll was expected to rise further.
The dead included women and children, while another 200 people were wounded.
An AFP correspondent said at least 10 houses had been flattened in the attack on Aazaz, which lies just north of the main battleground city of Aleppo and is often used as rear base by rebel Free Syrian Army fighters.
“This was a civilian area. All these houses were packed with women and children sleeping during the fast,” said witness Abu Omar, a civil engineer in his 50s, referring to the dawn-to-dusk fast Muslims observe during Ramadan.
“Only dogs can do something like this. Israel wouldn’t do such a thing in a war,” he said.
Witnesses and FSA forces who reinforced security around the town after the strike said the jet fired twice, targeting a makeshift media centre used by foreign reporters in the second, smaller strike.
The attack came amid heavy shelling of several districts of Aleppo, regarded as a pivotal battleground in the conflict that is now entering its 18th month and has killed more than 23,000 people according to activists.
Dozens of people, many wailing and shouting, were climbing over the rubble, trying to pull out victims, while hundreds of others fled. Entire families, carrying bags of clothes and boxes of food on their heads, were seen filing past the immigration office at the crossing point into the Turkish town of Kilis.
Witnesses said the bomb must have weighed at least half a ton and the impact shattered windows up to four blocks away.
Residents insisted there was no rebel base where the bomb struck.
In Aleppo itself, an AFP correspondent said a new front had opened in the northeastern district of Baaideen, forcing residents to flee as regime forces pounded the area using tanks and warplanes.
Earlier yesterday a massive bomb attack and a firefight shook Damascus. The rebel Free Syrian Army claimed the bomb attack targeted a military headquarters near a hotel used by UN observers as a warning to President al-Assad that it could strike anytime at the very heart of the regime.
A gunbattle also erupted between rebels and troops near the offices of new Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi, who took office after his predecessor defected last week, and a new Iranian embassy building that is still under construction.
Damascus has been rocked by bombs since the conflict began.