Army shelling and air raids killed dozens more civilians including children in Syrian flashpoints Monday, a watchdog said, while rebels and loyalists fought close-quarter battles in Aleppo’s main souk.
On the political front, Syria accused Washington of seeking to topple the Damascus regime by raising fears over its chemical weapons stockpiles and creating a scenario similar to that which led to the invasion of Iraq. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an air strike on the town of Salqeen in the mostly rebel-held province of Idlib early on Monday killed 21 people, including eight children.
The Britain-based watchdog said another 15 people were killed elsewhere, including by regime shelling in the provinces of Hama, Daraa and Homs.
In a video released by activists from Salqeen, a number of the victims are seen piled in the back of a pick-up truck, their bodies charred black with limbs torn off.
“My God, my son is dead,” a man wails as he looks on at the bloody disfigured corpses, finally putting his hand over his eyes.
According to Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman, among the dead are three children from the same family.
In another video, the bodies of three small children, probably the same ones, are shown lying on a bedsheet with their faces bloody and mutilated.
“These children are from one family,” a man tells the person filming.
Other footage shows residents and two Kalashnikov-toting men wearing fatigues walking over mounds of rubble in Salqeen. The camera pans to nearby buildings which have had their entire sides blown off, as a crying child can be heard in the background.
The videos cannot be independently verified due to severe restrictions on foreign media imposed by the regime.
An AFP correspondent in Aleppo, meanwhile, said rebels and regular soldiers traded fierce machinegun fire in and around the historic souk, which reverberated across the centuries-old UNESCO-listed covered market.
The fighting, which took place in an area of the souk facing Aleppo’s ancient citadel, came after parts of the market were ravaged by a fire, sparked by the fighting, on Friday night and Saturday.
Traders told AFP that the army had no presence inside the souk area, which has been infiltrated by rebels.
