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Airstrikes in Syria Kill More Than 30 in Refugee Camp
Video Burning tents and scorched ground are what remain of a refugee camp that, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, was hit by an airstrike, killing more than 25 people near the Syrian village of Sarmada.
By ANNE BARNARD
May 5, 2016
BEIRUT, Lebanon — More than 30 people were killed Thursday when warplanes struck a tent camp for displaced Syrians in the northern Syrian province of Idlib, according to antigovernment activists and opposition groups.
The attack took place shortly after insurgents launched an offensive against government forces in neighboring Aleppo Province just hours into what was supposed be to a new, 48-hour truce there.
Video images from the Kamuna camp in Idlib showed smoke billowing from rows of tattered and blackened tents as well as a pickup truck packed with wounded people moaning and crying. Women and children appeared to be among the victims.
In the remains of the camp — whose name means cumin in Arabic — scattered clothing, cooking pots and charred body parts could be seen.
The attack displaced some of the most vulnerable Syrians — people who had already fled their homes and, often, other refuges, and were stuck near the border with Turkey. The Turkish authorities have routinely stopped allowing Syrians to cross the border as refugees.
It was unclear who carried out the attack, but the warplanes operating over the insurgent-held province are typically those of the Syrian government and its most powerful ally, Russia.
The White House condemned the attack, calling it “indefensible,” The Associated Press reported.
South of the city of Aleppo, insurgent groups, including the Nusra Front, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda, began a coordinated attack, seeking to advance against government forces and allied militias in the town of Khan Touman and the surrounding area, according to insurgent spokesmen and antigovernment activists familiar with the fighting.
Taken together, the two events illustrated why both the Syrian government and its opponents were skeptical of the partial truce’s prospects. The opposition says that previous airstrikes by Syrian forces on civilian areas make it impossible to trust the government. And the government says its opponents are fair game for attack even during truces because they maintain battlefield alliances with the Nusra Front, which is excluded from such deals.
The fighting south of Aleppo appeared to revive a battlefield coalition known as Jaish al-Fatah, or the Army of Victory, which brought together the Nusra Front, other Islamist groups and some of the groups that the United States and its allies consider more moderate and have provided with weapons and salaries.
The two sides accused each other of breaking the cease-fire earlier in the day, with the government saying that insurgents had resumed shelling inside the divided city of Aleppo, and insurgents saying that the government had carried out airstrikes on the city’s southern outskirts.
At the same time, the Islamic State — also excluded from any truce deals — said on social media that it had seized the Shaer natural gas field, a key outpost in the desert of Homs Province, from pro-government forces and taken large amounts of ammunition.
The gas fields have changed hands several times between government and Islamic State forces, and their loss was a blow to the government of President Bashar al-Assad even as it celebrated its takeover of the nearby city of Palmyra.
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