12 children killed in Syria air strikes, says watchdog

AFP/Damascus

Elsewhere, activists accused the regime of destroying the minaret of the historic Omari mosque in southern Daraa, the so-called cradle of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

“Sixteen people were martyred after a warplane targeted the village of Haddad, which is majority Kurdish... including at least three children and two women,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Video footage uploaded on YouTube showed the aftermath of the attack in the province of Hasakeh, with several women carrying children from a damaged home, outside which two bodies can be seen, a pool of blood next to the head of one.

In northern Syria, the Kurdish population has largely observed a careful compromise with regime and rebel forces, fighting alongside neither, in return for security and semi-autonomy over majority Kurdish areas.

But there have been reports in recent weeks of Kurdish forces fighting alongside rebels in certain areas, and Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said rebels had used an area some distance from the site of the raid as a gathering point.

In the second incident, at least nine more children were killed in an air strike on the Qabun neighbourhood of northeastern Damascus, said the Britain-based Observatory.

Video of what activists said was the aftermath of the strike showed part of a house reduced to rubble and the surrounding air thick with dust raised by residents as they picked through grey breezeblocks and steel joints looking for survivors.

A second video also uploaded by activists on YouTube showed the bodies of at least seven children in blue body bags, some small enough to be sharing the bag with one or two others.

In the south, activists accused the regime of destroying the minaret of the historic Omari mosque in Daraa.

In amateur video footage, the mosque can be seen at the end of a street, its towering minaret toppling over after apparent shelling and crumbling into rubble and dust.

But state news agency Sana quoted a local official in Daraa as pinning blame for the minaret’s destruction on the Islamist rebel group Al Nusra Front.

Earlier this week, Al Nusra’s chief pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, a day after Al Qaeda in Iraq announced its affiliation with the Syrian jihadist group, prompting concern among some rebel fighters and opposition members.

Yesterday, the key Syrian National Coalition grouping warned that Al Nusra Front’s pledge of fealty to Al Qaeda would serve the Assad regime.

“The Syrian Coalition is deeply concerned about recent statements regarding the affiliations and ideologies of particular factions of the rebel forces,” the group said.

“Such initiatives only serve the goals of the Assad regime and harm the progress of the revolution,” it added, calling on Al Nusra “to stay within the ranks of nationalistic Syrians”.