At least 32 people, including 10 children, were killed by twin bombings near an elementary school in Syria yesterday.
The second blast went off as parents frantically searched for their sons and daughters in a street littered with school bags and body parts.
Syrian children are frequently among the victims of attacks in the country’s civil war, but yesterday they appeared to have been the target.
The first vehicle exploded as pupils were leaving school, and the second struck as adults carried away bodies, sending a new wave of panic through the crowd.
The attack happened outside the Ekremah al-Makhzoumi elementary school in a government-controlled area of the central city of Homs dominated by minority Alawites, the Shia offshoot sect to which President Bashar Assad’s family belongs. It was one of the deadliest incidents in the area in months.
Suicide bomber
The Sana state news agency said at least 32 people were killed and 115 wounded in the attacks. A local official said immediately after the bombings that at least 10 of the dead were children.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll in the twin attacks at 39, including 30 children under the age of 12. It said the second blast was caused by a suicide bomber.
The discrepancy in the casualty figures could not be immediately reconciled, but tolls frequently differ in the chaotic aftermath of attacks.
In footage of the bombings posted on a pro-government Facebook page, one man shouts “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Take him to the hospital!” as another man appears to drag away a child by his arms.
Other people rush about, narrowly avoiding a child’s severed head lying on the pavement. Smoke billows from a burning vehicle. As one boy tugs on a man’s hand another blast goes off.
Homs governor Talal Barazi described the blasts as a “terrorist act and a desperate attempt that targeted school children”.
Horrific attacks
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Syrian rebels fighting to oust Assad have carried out numerous bombings in government-held areas of Homs.
All sides have carried out horrific attacks on civilians during the conflict – now in its fourth year – but rarely have children appeared to be the direct target.
In May, Syrian government forces bombed a complex in the northern city of Aleppo that housed a school alongside a rebel compound. At least 19 people, including 10 children, were killed in that incident.
Meanwhile, the Observatory reported yesterday that militants of the Islamic State group beheaded nine Kurdish fighters, including three women, captured in clashes near the Syria-Turkey border. Dozens of militants and Kurdish fighters were killed in the fighting, it said.
Images posted on social media networks show women’s heads placed on a cement block, said to be in the northern Syrian city of Jarablous, which is held by militants.