At least 16 people died when two barrel bombs struck as mourners attended a wake for children killed in a separate barrel bombing in Aleppo, a Syrian monitoring group said.
The Aleppo Media Center reported a higher number, saying 24 people were killed and 30 others injured when the two barrel bombs hit Saturday.
The two bombs targeted a wake in rebel-held Bab al-Nayrab, the same neighborhood where 15 people were killed in a barrel bombing Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Aleppo Media Center activist and witness Mojahed Abo-Aljood said he was filming near the wake when a warning came on their walkie-talkies that there was a helicopter overhead. He took shelter in a basement and heard two explosions, exiting later to air covered with thick dust.
‘I couldn’t see’
He said he grabbed his camera and started walking around to document the horror and find people to help.
“On my right and on my left I saw dead people and I stepped on top of one myself because I couldn’t see due to the thickness of dust,” he said. “When the first barrel bomb hit near the wake, people started running toward the shelter where we were – then the second barrel bomb hit near the entrance of the basement shelter,” Abo-Aljood said. “That’s why there were many causalities,”
The two activist groups offered differing accounts of how many children were killed in the barrel bombing Thursday. Aleppo Media Center reported five children were among the dead; the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 11 children had died.
Amnesty International says barrel bombs are a common tactic of the Syrian regime.
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