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Syria: Explosion hits bus convoy carrying civilians evacuated from besieged towns under deal between regime and rebels | Syria: Explosion hits bus convoy carrying civilians evacuated from besieged towns under deal between regime and rebels |
(35 minutes later) | |
An explosion has hit a convoy of buses carrying civilians evacuated from besieged towns in Syria, killing at least 16 people. | |
The blast hit the Rashidin area on the outskirts of Aleppo, where dozens of buses carrying mostly Shia Muslim families from pro-government villages were waiting to enter the city. | |
Photos that were too graphic to publish showed a huge fire raging next to bodies scattered on the ground next to charred buses, including those of children. | |
State media said an unknown number of people had been killed or wounded in the attack, while the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the blast was caused by a bomb. | |
Reports that a suicide attacker had targeted the convoy with a car bomb could not be confirmed. | |
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, with Shias targeted predominantly by Isis and to a lesser extent by al-Qaeda in the past. | |
The victims are believed to be from the pro-government villages of Foua and Kefraya, who had been starving under a siege by Islamist rebels. | |
They were allowed to leave the area in the "four towns" deal struck between rebels and Bashar al-Assad’s government, which allowed thousands of people to leave the pro-rebel areas of Madaya and Zabadani, where residents had also been starving. | |
Dozens of buses carrying civilians from opposing side of the six-year civil left as planned on Friday but were held at depots overnight, parked up separated by a wall on the outskirts of Aleppo city. | |
Syrian state television blamed rebels for obstructing the deal, while Syrian Red Crescent teams distributed meals for families stranded more than 30 hours after they left their homes. | |
Residents from Kefraya and Foua were to be transferred government-controlled Jibrin, while those from Madaya and Zabadani were heading towards the rebel-held Idlib province. | |
“The people are restless and the situation is disastrous,” said Ahmed Afandar, a resident evacuated from his hometown near Madaya. | |
“All these thousands of people are stuck in less than half a kilometre. We are not moving forward or backward.” | |
Mr Afandar said people had not been ”pressured“ to remain on buses amid reported disagreements between regime and rebel negotiators over the evacuation of fighters. | |
An opposition representative, Ali Diab, told Al-Arabiya television that fewer armed men than agreed to were evacuated from the pro-government areas, violating the terms of the agreement. | |
A resident of Zabadani, Amer Burhan, said no evacuation had taken place. |