Regime barrel bomb attack kills 20 in Syria’s Aleppo: monitor
At least 20 people were killed on Tuesday in a regime barrel bomb attack on a mini-bus stand in a rebel-held part of
‘s Aleppo city, a monitor said.
“Helicopters committed a massacre, dropping a barrel bomb on a mini-bus station in the Fardous district of Aleppo, killing 20 civilians, among them children, and injuring 30 more,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights group said.
The Britain-based monitor said the toll was expected to rise because of the number of serious injuries among the wounded.
The group said most of bodies of those killed “were charred”.
Video footage distributed by activists and posted on YouTube showed rubble and twisted scraps of metal strewn across the cratered pavement where the station was, underneath a bridge.
Firefighters and civilians worked with hoses to tackle fierce blazes in several vehicles that produced thick clouds of smoke.
A least one car had been flipped on its side.
A second video showed several men hoisting a male victim missing a large section of the back of his torso onto an orange stretcher and into an ambulance.
It was unclear whether he was still alive.
Once Syria’s economic powerhouse, Aleppo was been divided between government control in the city’s west and rebel control in the east since shortly after fighting there began in mid-2012.
For months, the regime has waged an unrelenting aerial campaign against the opposition-held part of the city, making particular use of crude so-called barrel bombs.
Rights groups criticise the weapons as indiscriminate and say they are more likely to cause civilian casualties.
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1 Comments
The civil war in Syria is apparently a no-end in sight for the sit-tight president Bashar Assad . I think the people of Syria were simply let down by the western superpowers, the United States in particular when they were in dire circumstance in the first place. No thanks to the unflinching support accorded the Syrian president by his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, whose country is one of the P5+1 United Nations permanent members. Prior to the full-blown war in Syria, the United States government of president Barack Obama had sought the overwhelming support of its counterparts in the UN before launching its military arsenals in Syria, especially against the Assad regime, but this attempt was strongly refuted by the majority, Russia and China did play perfectly a yeoman’s job in defending the Syrian president when the matter was tailored before the UN. The alleged use of mass chemical weapon against the Syrian civilians by the Assad regime in its attempt aimed at fighting back the rebels became a hardline discourse for the United Nations. This allegation was however proven by the United Nations’ Atomic Energy agency, and an elaborate shipment of this stockpile of chemical weapons were taken out of Syria primarily meant for destruction. Without mincing words, had Mr Assad been toppled long time ago the emergence of members of the Islamic state, Isis would not have arisen. The gory situation of things in Syria is better imagined than experienced. With increasing daily rise in humanitarian crisis, Isil’s persistent act of savagery coupled with the Syrian government continuous assault against its citizenry, and of course not forgetting the different rebel groups whose course were either against the regime or the Islamic state, or even both the anarchical situation there has since spiralled out of control. All those who have been supporting the regime of president Assad either furtively or overtly have themselves to blame, especially looking at the brutal rise of Isil in not just the middle-east region but the entire world is simply at stake. Every part of the continent around the globe has had its own fairshare of Isil brutal attacks or a replica of Isil brutal attacks against its citizenry. I think it will be very unfair to pin the blame on the US government only over the foot dragging approach to help the people of Syria. The international community, for instance the UN hasn’t lived up to its billing handling the crisis in Syria.
Although the ongoing US-led airstrike in Iraq and Syria may be classed as too little, too late but its impact has been felt more in Iraq than in Syria, the latter being the headquarters of the terrorist group. Rationally speaking, the airstrikes have been playing a key significant role in helping to degrade Isil but still much more needs to be done. Recently, the United States reaffirmed its preparedness to train and mass equip some of the rebel groups considered as moderate in the war-torn country against members of the Islamic state. I wonder how the sitting regime will be immuned from the attacks of these moderate rebels by the time the US government is through with its strategy.
We will review and take appropriate action.