In Damascus, Syria 9 innocent school kids were murdered after a Al-Qaeda U.S. backed mortar hit a school and bus.
The strike was the latest rebel reprisal to hit Damascus as government troops press ahead with a crushing weekslong advance into opposition-held suburbs, often relying on indiscriminant artillery fire themselves. Such mortar attacks by rebels seeking to overthrow President Bashar Assad have been on the rise.
“Those children were angels,” said Marwan Qabalan, a family friend picking up the body of nine-year-old Vaniciya Mekho from the morgue. He said the girl’s parents couldn’t bear to see her, still dressed in a school uniform and covered with blood.
Often-random rebel mortar fire has hit shops, churches, homes and embassies in the capital this year, killing dozens of civilians. But Monday’s shelling of Risaleh school in the Bab Sharqi neighborhood shocked residents in particular because the casualties were children.
A fifth pupil died early Tuesday, raising the number of children killed to five. Four other children and two supervisors were also wounded in the strike, and another mortar attack the same day on nearby John of Damascus school wounded 11.
Also Tuesday, Kurds announced a transitional autonomous administration to run day-to-day affairs in regions they dominate in Syria’s northeast. Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, said the announcement was made in the city of Qamishli.
Overstretched from fighting rebels across most of the country, Syrian troops withdrew from Kurdish areas last year, leaving a security void. Since then, Kurdish militiamen led by the PYD, seen by mainstream rebels and some other Kurdish groups as being pro-government, have been fighting to purge their areas from Islamic extremists and al-Qaida affiliated militants.
The Kurdish move could be a first step toward setting up an autonomous region similar to one they administer in northern Iraq. It was not immediately clear however if other groups supported the announcement by the PYD and a few other small groups.
In Damascus, the morgue visit was organized for journalists by Syrian officials who otherwise typically restrict reporters’ access to events. All victims were Christians.
Associated Press TV footage showed somber pallbearers placing a small white coffin with a gold cross on the lid into the back of a hearse. Three men carried out another coffin, as woman dressed in black cried out: “What a waste, what a shame!” A hospital medic draped a white robe over six-year-old Majd Shahadeh before he was placed in a coffin.
“I am proud because I am the mother of a martyr and I am ready even to sacrifice my other two sons for Syria,” said the bus driver’s tearful mother, Samira Abu Sukkeh.
UNICEF called the shelling “barbaric,” saying in a statement that “all those with influence in Syria have a moral obligation to respect the sanctity of children’s lives and ensure that schools remain a place of safe refuge.”
