Firefighters working at the site that was hit by a bomb attack in Damascus, yesterday.
BEIRUT: Bombs planted by rebels exploded at a school building occupied by pro-government militias in Damascus yesterday and world leaders discussed Syria’s deepening crisis at a UN General Assembly meeting, but without proposals to resolve it.
Vastly outgunned, rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Al Assad have increasingly relied on home-made bombs to target their opponents, striving to level the playing field against state forces using fighter jets, artillery and tanks.
“At exactly 9:35am, seven improvised devices were set off in two explosions to target a school used for weekly planning meetings between shabbiha militia and security officers,” said Abu Moaz, a leader of Ansar Al Islam, one of the rebel groups in the 18-month-old revolt against Assad.
Rebels said they hoped their attack would kill top-level security officials — as they did with a major Damascus bombing in July — but gave no casualty count. State media said at least seven people were wounded, with minor damage to buildings.
Activists say that more than 27,000 people have been killed in the Syrian uprising, but the geo-strategic rivalries of world and regional powers have wrought deadlock over how to solve the conflict. The West and Gulf Arab states have sided with the opposition, while Iran, Russia and China have supported Assad.
Syria’s conflict, once a peaceful protest movement, has evolved into a civil war that the UN Special Envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said was “extremely bad and getting worse.” He said that the stalemate in the country could soon “find an opening”, without elaborating.
Even the capital Damascus has become a battleground between Assad’s forces and opposition fighters. Last week, the army bombarded rebel strongholds there to flush them out of the capital, once seen as Assad’s untouchable seat of power but now a scene of daily fighting.
In yesterday’s Damascus bombing, the state news channel Syria TV quoted a government official as saying two improvised explosives planted by “terrorists” blew up near the “Sons of Martyrs” school.
Residents said smoke was billowing from the area in southeastern Damascus and ambulances were rushing to the scene. Some said they believed two people had died in the attack but could not name the victims.
Damascus residents also reported heavy clashes for two hours on Baghdad Street in a central district of the capital, just to the north of the ancient Old City.
Soldiers shot dead a child yesterday in Syria’s Aleppo province when they targeted the car she was in, a watchdog said, giving an initial toll of 62 people killed nationwide.
The six-year-old was killed after midnight on the motorway linking Syria’s second city Aleppo to the capital Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Another child was badly wounded in bombardments on the northern metropolis, while a teenage boy was killed in shelling elsewhere in Aleppo province, it said.
State media said the army had retaken the Aleppo district of Arkoub, but the Observatory said there was still fighting in the area.
A military official said in Aleppo that “army operations have been completed in Arkoub” and that security forces were conducting “door-to-door raids in search of rebels”.
Syrian television showed footage of soldiers carrying Kalashnikovs and patrolling Arkoub, where high-rise buildings were shelled out and rubble lined the streets.
State media said “our armed forces have cleansed Arkoub district of terrorists,” citing a military source.
Municipal maintenance teams “have entered Arkoub to rehabilitate the infrastructure destroyed by the terrorist mercenaries,” the official Sana news agency said, using regime terminology for the rebels.
The British-based charity Save the Children released a harrowing report about abuse of Syrian refugee children.
Khalid, 15, said he was hung by his arms from the ceiling of his own school building and beaten senseless. Wael said he saw a 6-year-old starved and beaten to death, “tortured more than anyone else in the room.” “He was beaten regularly. I watched him die,” Wael was quoted as saying. “He only survived for three days and then he simply died.”
UN investigators say Syrian government forces have committed human rights violations “on an alarming scale”, but have also listed multiple killings and kidnappings by armed rebels trying to oust Assad after 12 years in power.
Agencies
