Nearly 200 dead and hundreds injured after Syrian airstrike targets people queuing for bread
- Bodies left piled on the streets among rubble and shrapnel
- latest reports say hundreds were also wounded in the strike
- Eye-witness videos show the bloodied bodies of women and children killed
- More than 100 people were queuing for hours when the air strike occurred
- Human rights groups accuse military of intentional attacks on civilians
Up to 200 people were killed while queuing for bread in Syria yesterday, one of the deadliest air strikes in the country’s civil war.
Videos showed dozens of blood-stained bodies crumpled in the street among piles of rubble and shrapnel. Hundreds more were injured.
“When I got there, I could see piles of bodies all over the ground. There were women and children,” said Samer al-Hamawi, an activist in the town of Halfaya, where the strike hit a bakery. “There are also dozens of wounded.”
Relatives mourn the death of their family members killed in the strikes
Rebels hold a funeral service for those killed in the military attacks
New York-based Human Rights Watch condemned army air strikes on bakeries earlier this year, arguing that in some incidents the Syrian military was not using enough precision to target rebel sites, and in other instances it may have intentionally hit civilians.
Hamawi, who spoke via Skype, uploaded a video of the scene that showed dozens of dust-coated bodies lined up near a pile of rubble by a concrete building, its walls blackened.
Halfaya was seized by rebels last week in their 21-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad.
One video showed a man frantically trying to dig out a moaning woman, drenched in blood and covered by a pile of dirt and debris. Another showed a young boy flailing in the middle of the road. Both of his feet had been blown off in the blast.
Hamawi said more than 1,000 people had been queuing at the bakery. Shortages of fuel and flour have made bread production erratic across the country, and people often wait for hours to buy loaves.
“We hadn’t received flour in around three days so everyone was going to the bakery today, and lots of them were women and children,” Hamawi said. “I still don’t know yet if my relatives are among the dead.’
Rami Abdelrahman, of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said: ‘It is still very unclear what the casualties are … From looking at the videos I expect the death toll to be around or above 50, and not higher than 100. But for now I am keeping my estimate at dozens killed until we have more information.”
Another activist said residents picking through the bodies were still determining which were wounded and which were dead.
Women and children were crying and screaming as some men rushed to the scene with motorbikes and vans to carry away the victims.
The video showed a man stopping to pick up half a corpse lying in the street, wrapping it up in his own jacket and carrying it away.
Frantic residents were using their bare hands to try to pick through blocks of concrete to reach a pile of bodies beneath them.
“Where are the Arabs, where is the world?” shouted one man. “Look at all of these bodies!”