Syrian airstrike kills 42 people

More than 40 residents of a rebel-held area near Damascus died yesterday in a government airstrike, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group and opposition activists said.

Syrian government officials were not immediately available to comment on the reported attack in Hamoria, a district in the Eastern Ghouta area that has been besieged by security forces.

The Observatory, which monitors the war in Syria, said 42 people had been killed, including six children, in what it described as a massacre.

The opposition grassroots Local Coordination Committees said on its Facebook page that the strike hit a public square where people were leaving a mosque after prayers yesterday.

Reuters could not immediately verify the reports. An employee at the information ministry in Damascus said there would be no one to answer questions until today.

Syria’s air force has launched daily airstrikes in the civil war, which started after security forces cracked down on pro-democracy protests in 2011.

On Tuesday, an air raid on a cattle market in territory controlled by the hard-line Islamic State group killed 43 people, the Observatory monitor said.

Nasir Haj Mansour, an official in the Kurdish administration that controls nearby areas, said the death toll was much higher, about 70.

“The strike, according to our information, was painful for Daesh, in addition to civilians,” he said by Skype, using a derogatory Arabic acronym for Islamic State, which is fighting the governments of Syria and neighboring Iraq.

The United Nations says 200,000 people have been killed in Syria’s war.

 

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2015/01/24/syrian-airstrike-kills-42-people.html