Damascus: At least 30 children were killed in a double bombing at a school in the central Syrian city of Homs on Wednesday, a monitoring group said.
They were among 39 people who died in the attack in the Akrameh neighbourhood, according to a new toll from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Children targetted
Syria’s children are frequently among the victims of attacks in the country’s civil war, but on Wednesday they appear to have been the target.
The first vehicle exploded as children were leaving school, and the second struck as adults carried away bodies, sending a new wave of panic through the crowd.
The second bomb exploded as parents frantically searched for their sons and daughters in a street littered with school bags and body parts.
The blasts occurred outside the Ekremah Al Makhzoumi elementary school in a government-controlled area of Homs dominated by minority Alawites, the Shiite offshoot sect to which President Bashar Al Assad’s family belongs.
It was one of the deadliest strikes to hit the area in months.
“Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Take him to the hospital!” one man shouted, as another appeared to drag away a child by his arms, in footage shared on a pro-government Facebook group. The footage appeared genuine and was consistent with Associated Press reporting of events.
Pandemonium
Two little girls and a boy screamed and cried as they were carried away. Other people rushed about, narrowly avoiding a child’s severed head lying on the road. Smoke billowed from a burning vehicle.
As one boy tugged on a man’s hand as if to run from the site, another blast was heard. A young girl covered her ears as others screamed and ran away. “Oh God! Oh God!” one man hoarsely shouted.
A local official confirmed the casualty figures and said another 56 people were wounded in the attack. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media. State-run media outlet SANA also reported the bombings, as did the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which gathers information from a network of activists inside Syria.
SANA and the Britain-based Observatory gave similar death tolls, although they did not say how many children were among the casualties.
Homs Governor Talal Barazi described the blasts as a “terrorist act and a desperate attempt that targeted school children.”
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Wednesday’s attack but Syrian rebels fighting to oust Al Assad have carried out similar bombings during the country’s civil war.
All sides in the conflict have carried out horrific attacks on civilians during the conflict -- now in its fourth year -- but rarely have children appeared to be the direct target.
