Airstrike in Syria kills at least 17 in an underground shelter

An airstrike Thursday killed at least 17 civilians who had been hiding in an underground shelter in the deadliest single incident yet of an accelerating offensive by the Syrian government and its allies in the southern Syrian province of Daraa, according to witnesses and war monitors.

The strike came as the United Nations warned the international community of the dangers of what could turn into yet another major bloodbath in Syria, this time along the borders of Jordan and Israel, and risk a wider conflict. On Sunday, Russian warplanes joined the offensive by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to reclaim territory in Daraa that had been captured by rebels over the past seven years.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least five children were among 17 people known to have been killed in Thursday’s strike on the shelter in the rural town of Musayfra. The toll could rise, the group said, because many people are critically injured.

A doctor who joined the rescue teams that headed to the scene put the toll at 23, including 11 children, and said approximately 15 other people were taken to hospitals. He said about 40 people from four families had been hiding from relentless airstrikes in the basement of a building on the outskirts of the town when the building took a direct hit.

“There were pieces of flesh and rubble everywhere,” said the doctor, who did not want to be identified out of fear for his safety.

The families had already escaped their homes in the center of the town in the hope of avoiding the bombardments, he said.

Photographs posted on social media by activists showed the bloodied corpses of seven children allegedly killed in the strike, five of them crumpled in the back of a van and two lying on the ground.

It was the bloodiest attack since Russian warplanes joined the offensive, and it came despite appeals by the international community to allow time for diplomacy to avert a battle that risks drawing in regional countries. Iranian-backed militias are among the loyalist forces backing Assad.

The U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, told the Security Council on Wednesday he is “gravely concerned” by the battlefield developments. He urged world powers to find a solution that will spare civilian suffering and avert regional tensions so that “we do not see once again ... a repetition of what we saw sadly in Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta.” He referred to devastating carnage in the city in northern Syria two years ago and the Damascus suburb earlier this year.

Already, the fight for Daraa is turning into a replay of those key battles, as the Assad government focuses its attention on one of the last remaining areas still outside government control. Russian and Syrian warplanes have been carrying out relentless strikes against towns and villages, targeting medical facilities and rescue workers and prompting tens of thousands of residents to flee their homes for safer territory elsewhere.

Most have sought refuge closer to the Jordanian border and the demarcation line with Israel, but neither country is allowing the refugees to escape, leaving them vulnerable to shortages of food and water in soaring summer temperatures, aid agencies say.

The battle has unraveled a nearly year-long truce in the area underwritten by the United States, Jordan and Russia that had been showcased by the Trump administration as evidence its partnership with Russia in Syria is working to tamp down violence.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert warned in a statement last week there would be “serious repercussions” if the ceasefire in the area were violated.

But days later, the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan, sent a message to U.S.-allied Syrian rebels in the area saying they would be on their own if they decided to resist the government advances.

“You should not base your decision on the assumption or expectation of military intervention by the U.S.,” said the message, delivered in Arabic over a messaging app and shared by a member of the Syrian opposition.

A fire swept through one of Nairobi’s largest open-air markets early Thursday, killing 15 people and sending 70 injured to hospitals, an official said, as traders who lived there struggled to wake their families and flee.

Young children were among the victims, President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a statement, and many of the injured were in critical condition.

Gikomba market has burned several times in recent years, and Kenyatta said that “we owe the victims, and the people of Nairobi, a clear, credible plan to end these fires.”

Nairobi County Commissioner Kangethe Thuku said six bodies had been recovered and nine were in a building and had yet to be retrieved.

Rescue teams searched for more bodies and survivors in the market in the Pumwani low-income neighborhood in Kenya’s capital. Many Kenyans shop for secondhand clothes from the market, which also supplies other vendors with used clothes from Europe and the United States.

The cause of the fire was not immediately announced but “for now we have declared this site a crime scene,” Thuku said. Security forces guarded the smoking site as workers picked through the blackened rubble.

One market trader, Ruth Kaveke, grasped a wad of burnt currency and said it was the only thing she managed to salvage from her cloth-making store. It was the second time fire has destroyed her only source of livelihood in as many years.

“I live in the market because it is convenient and I wanted to be close by; just in case of fire I could salvage my property,” she said.

Her two children would not easily wake up when the latest fire broke out, however, and by the time she got them to safety it was too late to save anything else, she said.

The fire started around 2:30 a.m. and was contained about an hour and a half later, according to the St. John Ambulance charity.

Residents said the crowded market has had fires multiple times, and traders have suffered huge losses. Officials have said access roads are clogged with traders who block emergency response services, while critics say those services are poor.

The market is a five-minute walk from Nairobi’s central business district in an area targeted by the Nairobi County Government for an upgrade.