Syria air strikes kill 20 people including civilians, activists say
President Bashar al-Assad’s air force has been one of his biggest assets in the two-year-old civil war and he has used warplanes and helicopters to try to check rebel advances, although the regime also frequently hits civilian areas.
A Syrian government airstrike on a town in the country’s northwest killed at least 20 people Saturday, shattering store fronts, setting cars ablaze and sending a giant plume of black and gray smoke into the sky.
President Bashar al-Assad’s air force has been one of his biggest assets in the two-year-old civil war and he has used warplanes and helicopters to try to check rebel advances, although the regime also frequently hits civilian areas.
A Human Rights Watch report this week accused the Syrian government of committing war crimes by using indiscriminate and sometimes deliberate airstrikes against civilians, killing at least 4,300 people since the summer.
Saturday’s air raid struck the town of Saraqeb in Idlib province, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group. The Observatory said three children were among the 20 people killed in the attack.
Amateur videos posted online showed a giant plume of black smoke, and people in cars and on motorbikes racing to help the wounded. A group of men could be seen carrying a wounded man covered in gray dust. Another man in the video rushes with a bucket of water to help extinguish cars in flames. Rubble and twisted metal litter the street.
The video appeared genuine and corresponded to other reporting by The Associated Press of the events depicted.