Damascus: More than 60 people were killed in a regime air strike on a bakery in a rebel-held town on Monday, monitors said, as peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi launched a new bid to resolve Syria’s brutal 21-month conflict.
In one of the deadliest incidents of the conflict, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike hit a bakery in Halfaya in the central province of Hama, killing more than 60 people and wounding at least 50.
Many of the wounded were in critical condition, it said.
“In Halfaya, regime forces bombarded a bakery and committed a massacre that killed dozens of people, including women and children, and wounded many others,” said the Local Coordination Committees, a grassroots network of activists. “A MiG (jet) has attacked! Look at (President Bashar al-) Assad’s weapons. Look, world, look at the Halfaya massacre,” says an unidentified cameraman shooting an amateur video distributed by the Observatory.
The footage showed a bombed one-storey block and a crater in the road. Bloodied bodies lay on the road, while others could be seen in the rubble.
Men carried victims out on their backs, among them at least one woman, the video showed. On Monday, rebels launched an all-out assault on army positions across Hama, which is home to strong anti-regime sentiment.
Another of the bloodiest attacks in the Syrian conflict was on a bread line in the Qadi Askar district of Aleppo city on August 16 that left 60 people dead, according to local hospital records.
International envoy Brahimi, meanwhile, travelled to Damascus overland from neighbouring Lebanon on a previously unannounced visit, officials said. (AFP)