BLOODY MOTHER’S DAY AS DOZENS KILLED IN DAMASCUS MARKET ATTACK

In one of the deadliest attacks in the Syrian capital in the country’s seven-year civil war, at least 44 people, most of them women and children, were killed when insurgents fired mortar shells on a busy market in Damascus, state media said Wednesday.

In another bloody scene, an airstrike killed 21 — 16 of them children — in a rebelheld province in northwestern Syria, an activist said. The children, between seven and 10 years old, were leaving their schools in Kfar Batkeeh village when jets began flying overhead.

Raghda Ghanoum, an activist near Kfar Batkeeh, said the children and four adults took cover in a cave nearby, where the airstrikes hit. Ghanoum said she documented 21 victim names, including 16 children.

The violence in both government-held and opposition-held areas came as Syrians celebrated Mother’s Day, turning the occasion that ushers the spring season into a blood-spattered day for families on both sides of the conflict.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 20 were killed in the airstrikes on the village.

The Observatory put the death toll in the market shelling in Damascus was 43, including 11 pro-government fighters. Videos of the aftermath posted online showed scenes of chaos, with people screaming and bodies and store mannequins strewn across the ground.