Syria air raid near school kills 7: activists

Army tightens siege of rebel bastion near Damascus

BEIRUT, May 3, (Agencies): A Syrian government air raid struck near a school in the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday, killing at least seven people including children, two activist groups said.

The Aleppo Media Center activist group and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike hit the Seif al-Dawla neighborhood in Aleppo. The city, once the country’s largest, has been divided between government and opposition forces since mid2012.

The Observatory said seven people were killed, including four children. The Aleppo Media center put the death toll at more than 10 and said around 20 people were wounded. Differences in death tolls are common in the chaotic aftermath of attacks in Syria.

In one video posted on the Aleppo Media Center’s Facebook page, rescuers carried a young boy and a man — both badly bloodied and covered in dust — to a waiting ambulance. The video appeared genuine and corresponded to other Associated Press reporting.

Meanwhile, Syria’s army cut the last main supply route for a rebel bastion east of Damascus Sunday, further tightening a crippling siege on the area, a monitor and state media said.

“The regime has cut off the last main road for rebels leading out of Eastern Ghouta,” the main opposition stronghold in Damascus province, said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights chief Rami Abdel Rahman.

He said army units had taken over almost all of the village of Maydaa, which lies along a road running east which rebels use to bring food and reinforcements into besieged neighbourhoods.

Syria’s official news agency SANA quoted a military official as saying the army had taken full control of Maydaa.

“A large number of terrorists are thought to be dead,” SANA reported, adding that army units “shut the last route for terrorists” that ran east.

Eastern Ghouta has been under a devastating government siege for nearly two years in an attempt to break the rebel hold over the area.

Abdel Rahman told AFP rebels could still rely on a few small roads that lead out of Eastern Ghouta but said they were “very dangerous”.

He said there were clashes underway in Maydaa between Syrian regime forces and Jaysh al-Islam, the most powerful rebel group operating in the area.

Jaysh al-Islam spokesman Islam Alloush said Syrian troops tried to overrun Maydaa but were “ambushed” by the rebels.

“Clashes are still underway but if the army succeeds in taking Maydaa they could use it as a launchpad to storm Eastern Ghouta,” Alloush told AFP by telephone from Turkey.

The rebel bastion of Eastern Ghouta has been subjected to massive regime bombardments for months.

Syria’s four-year conflict began with anti-regime protests in mid-March 2011 and spiralled into a bloody war after a harsh government crackdown on demonstrators.

More than 210,000 people have been killed in the conflict, according to the Observatory.

In other news, the UN’s cultural body on Sunday awarded its annual press freedom prize to Mazen Darwish, a Syrian journalist and rights activist who has been jailed by the regime for more than three years.

Darwish was arrested on Feb 16, 2012 along with Hani Zaitani and Hussein Ghreir, his colleagues at the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression. They are accused of “promoting terrorist acts”.

“I call on the Syrian authorities for his and his colleagues’ release,” UNESCO director general Irina Bokova said at the ceremony in Latvia to mark World Press Freedom Day, echoing repeated calls by rights groups, press organisations and the United Nations.

Darwish is one of the founders of syriaview.net, an independent news site banned by Syrian authorities in 2006 — a move he said at the time was part of the state’s “repression which targets free expression and democratic activists”.