Air strike kills 16 in Syria high school

BEIRUT (AFP) – An air strike on a high
school killed 16 people, most of them
students and teachers, in a rebel-held
city in northern Syria on Sunday, a
monitoring group said.
"The Syrian air force bombed a
technical high school in the city of
Raqa, killing 16 people, among them 10
students aged under 18, and wounding
many others, some critically," said the
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,
updating an earlier toll.
The Britain-based group posted video
footage showing mangled bodies, one
lying under schoolbooks. Its
authenticity could not immediately be
verified.
"There was panic, with children crying
as they sought to take shelter," the
Observatory quoted a survivor as
saying.
Raqa, on the Euphrates River valley 160
kilometres (100 miles) east of the main
northern city of Aleppo, is the only
provincial capital entirely in rebel
hands.
Captured from government forces on
March 6, the city is now largely
controlled by Al-Qaeda loyalists of the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The air strike came after rebels
launched an overnight attack on army
positions in Nasseriya al-Qalamun,
north of Damascus, killing at least 19
soldiers and wounding 60, the
Observatory said.
"There were also losses in the ranks of
the rebels, who succeeded in capturing
several positions," it added, without
giving a figure.
Meanwhile, the bodies of 14 pro-regime
militiamen killed in Zamalka east of
Damascus were transported to their
native city of Homs, said the
Observatory.
The army said it killed "a large number"
of rebels in Nashabiyeh, north of the
capital.
Violence has raged for months around
Damascus, as the army has fought hard
to keep the rebels out of the city.
Activists say the army has for months
besieged rebel-held areas, mainly east
and southwest of Damascus.
The Observatory, meanwhile, updated
its toll to 34 for a Friday car bombing at
a mosque in Rankus north of the
capital.
Among the casualties were four
children, it said.
In southern Syria, after four days of
fighting that killed 26 soldiers and "a
large number" of rebels, among them
seven non-Syrians, the opposition took
a customs building and an area linking
Daraa to the Golan Heights, the
Observatory said.
A security source downplayed the
development, saying: "We cannot say
the terrorist groups have taken over
this or that position, because the
situation shifts. The fighting continues."
Amman, meanwhile, protested to
Damascus after a shell struck the
northern Jordanian city of Ramtha three
days ago
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