44 dead in rebel attack on Damascus City

BEIRUT—

In one of the deadliest attacks in Syria’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 on Wednesday. In another bloody scene, an air strike killed 21 people—16 of them children—on a rebel-held province in northwestern Syria. The violence came as Syrians celebrated Mother’s Day, turning the occasion into a bloodspattered day for families on both sides of the conflict. The death toll in the market shelling in Damascus was 44, including 11 progovernment fighters. Videos of the aftermath posted online showed scenes of chaos with bodies strewn on the ground.

—AFP HOSPITAL WAIT Relatives of Damascus residents wounded in a rebel attack on a shopping area wait at a hospital.