Orchestra fiddles, refugee camp burns

Palmyra hosts concert to celebrate success; airstrike kills 28

DAMASCUS, Syria — A renowned Russian conductor led a triumphant concert Thursday in the ruins of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, once terrorized by the Islamic State group, even as an airstrike on a refugee camp in the north left at least 28 people dead and dozens wounded, including many children.

The performance in the same ancient amphitheater where IS militants carried out widely publicized killings — and called “A Prayer for Palmyra” — was intended to send a message that Russia’s presence in Syria would bring hope and stability.

But even as strains of Bach and Sergei Prokofiev’s First Symphony echoed through the Roman theater packed with an audience that included Russian servicemen, Syrian government ministers and children in colorful native dress, the war raged elsewhere.

Images posted on social media of the aftermath of the airstrike that tore through the Sarmada camp in rebel-held territory close to the border with Turkey showed tents burned to the ground, charred bodies, and bloodied women and children being loaded onto a pickup truck.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack on the camp in Idlib province where some 2,000 internally displaced people had taken shelter from the fighting in nearby Aleppo and Hama provinces over the past year. The Britainbased Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 28 people were killed while the Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said more than 30 died.

The White House called the strike “indefensible.” There was “no justifiable excuse” to target civilians who had already fled their homes from violence, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, calling the situation “heartbreaking.”

Earnest said it was too early to say whether Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces carried out the attack, but he said he had no knowledge of any U.S. or coalition aircraft operating in the area.

U.N. Humanitarian Chief Stephen O’Brien called for an independent investigation, saying that if the camp was deliberately targeted it “could amount to a war crime.”

The footage of charred bodies and desperate men pouring buckets of water to try to douse the flames was in stark contrast to the concert at the UNESCO world heritage site of Palmyra, where renowned conductor Valery Gergiev led a performance by the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra from St. Petersburg.