The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bloody day in Syria for kids and women on Mother’s Day
Twenty people reportedly killed by airstrikes on village.
BEIRUT — 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 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 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.
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 four-year old son. “We just saw him in the morgue,” the woman told Al-Ikhbariya. 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.
Government forces meanwhile
continued to pound opposition-held areas with shelling and airstrikes. The first-responders group known as the White Helmets said 56 civilians were killed Tuesday in Douma, the largest town in eastern Ghouta, updating an earlier toll. Video from the White Helmets showed rescue workers surrounded by fire and ongoing shelling struggling to retrieve survivors from a building in Douma.
The assault on eastern Ghouta has displaced 45,000 people, the United Nations said Tuesday. Before the latest offensive, it was estimated that 400,000 people were trapped in the besieged region. The rebels first seized the area in 2012.
The Syrian Civil Defense said that since the latest offensive started a month ago, it documented 1,252 civilians killed in more than 2,990 airstrikes and hundreds of other shellings.
Government forces have made major gains in recent days, leaving just a small fraction of eastern Ghouta under rebel control. President Bashar Assad paid a rare visit to troops on the front lines over the weekend.