SYRIA As attacks rock capital, dozens killed at market
BEIRUT — In one of the deadliest attacks in the Syrian capital in the country’s sevenyear 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 air strike killed 21 — 16 of them children — in a rebel-held province in northwestern Syria, an activist said. The children, between 7 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 air strikes 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 air strikes on the village.
The Observatory put the death toll in the market shelling in Damascus at 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.
Hospital Director Mohammed Haitham al-Husseini told Al-Ikhbariya TV that 35 others were wounded in the mortar attack, with six in intensive care. He said most of the casualties were women and children.
Witnesses told state-run TV that the mortar shells fell during rush hour in the popular market on the eve of Mother’s Day, celebrated in the Middle East with the start of spring. A child said he was out shopping with his family for Mother’s Day when they heard a huge explosion.
“Everyone started running, and people were going into narrow streets to give first aid to others,” the child said.
A woman speaking in the hospital said her niece, who was wounded by shrapnel, lost her 4-year old son.
“We just saw him in the morgue,” the woman told AlIkhbariya. The TV network did not identify the woman or the child.
The government blamed the attack on rebels in the eastern Ghouta suburbs, where Syrian troops backed by Russian warplanes have been waging a major offensive over the past month that has killed hundreds of people.