At least 100 die in blast at critical evacuation center
BEIRUT — A stalled population transfer resumed Saturday after a deadly explosion killed at least 100 people, including children, government supporters and opposition fighters, at an evacuation point — adding new urgency to the widely criticized operation.
The blast ripped through a bus depot in the al-Rashideen area near Aleppo where thousands of government loyalists who had evacuated the day before waited restlessly for hours. Opposition fighters guarded the area while negotiators bickered over the completion of the transfer deal. Only yards away, hundreds of evacuees from pro-rebel areas loitered in a walled-off parking lot, guarded by government troops.
Footage from the scene showed bodies, including those of fighters, lying alongside buses charred from the blast. Personal belongings could be seen dangling out of the windows. Fires raged from a number of vehicles as rescuers struggled to put them out.
The scenes were the latest in the unyielding bloodshed of Syria. Earlier this month, at least 89 people were killed in a chemical attack as children foaming at the mouth were also caught on camera.
The bloody mayhem that followed the Saturday attack only deepened the resentment of the transfer criticized as population engineering. It also reflected the chaos surrounding negotiations between the warring parties. The United Nations did not oversee the transfer deal for the villages of Foua and Kfraya, besieged by the rebels, and Madaya and Zabadani, encircled by the government.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but pro-government media and the opposition exchanged accusations, each pointing to foreign interference or conspiracies undermining the deal.
State TV al-Ikhbariya said the attack was the result of a car bomb carrying food aid to be delivered to the evacuees in the rebel-held area and accused rebel groups of carrying it out. A TV broadcaster from the area said: “There can be no life with the terrorist groups.”
A rebel spokesman said the car with the bomb had been parked in the area and abandoned. Another spokesman for one of the rebel groups that negotiated the deal said it is scarcely believable that the rebels would target their own fighters in such an attack. Yasser Abdelatif, a media official for Ahrar al-Sham, said about 30 rebel gunmen were killed in the blast. He accused the government or extremist rebel groups of orchestrating the attack.