Syrian army academy drone attack kills 78 – report

A drone attack on a Syrian military academy in Homs has killed at least 78 people, a monitoring group says.

Nine civilians were among those who died when drones carrying explosives targeted a graduation cer­emony attended by cadets’ families, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

The army blamed “terrorist groups backed by known international forces”.

There was no immediate claim from the rebels and jihadists battling the government in the country’s civil war.

The drone attack is believed to have been launched from opposi­tion-held areas north-west of Homs.

Later, first responders from the White Helmets reported that five civilians had been killed in intense government artillery and missile strikes on several cities, towns and villages in the opposition stronghold of Idlib province.

Syria’s state news agency, Sana, cited a statement from the General Command of the Armed Forces as saying that several drones carrying explosives targeted the Homs military academy just after the afternoon graduation ceremony had ended.

“The aggression resulted in the death of several civilians and military personnel (and) in addition the injury of dozens of the invited families, as well as several participating students,” it added, without giving any figures.

The statement said the armed forces “considers this act an unprec­edented criminal one, and affirms that it will respond with full force and determination to these terrorist groups wherever they are”.

A man who had earlier helped set up decorations at the site told Reuters news agency: “After the ceremony, people went down to the courtyard and the explosives hit. We don’t know where it came from, and corpses littered the ground.”

The Syrian Observatory, a UK-based monitoring group that has a network of sources on the ground, said most of those killed were mili­tary personnel and that a child of an officer and a woman were among the civilian fatalities.

Another 140 people were injured, many of them seriously, it added.

The group also reported that Syria’s defence minister attended the graduation ceremony but that he left minutes before the attack. —BBC

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