Syrian rebels have shelled a rally that was supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s re-election, killing 21 people, after the army cut a key rebel supply route to the main northern city of Aleppo.
The mortar fire, which hit a tent where al-Assad supporters had gathered in the southern city of Daraa on Thursday, also wounded at least 30 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Al-Assad faces two little-known challengers in the June 3 vote that exiled rebels and their Western backers have labeled a farce, and is widely expected to clinch a third seven-year term.
The human rights group said a child was among the dead in the attack, the first on al-Assad supporters since campaigning got under way earlier this month.
Pro-government militiamen were also among those killed in the attack, the Britain-based watchdog said.
Meanwhile, Syrian opposition activists have posted a video of what they say is chlorine gas floating through the streets of a village, the first such footage of what they say is a chemical weapon campaign by al-Assad.
The village of Kfar Zeita, in the central province of Hama, 200km north of Damascus, has been the epicenter of what activists and medics call a two-month-old assault in which chlorine gas canisters have been dropped out of helicopters.
Damascus denies that forces loyal to al-Assad have used chlorine or other more poisonous gases and blames all chemical attacks on rebels fighting them in a three-year-old uprising.
Text accompanying the video, posted on Thursday by a user called Mustapha Jamaa, said it was filmed that day in Kfar Zeita by the Revolution General Commission, an opposition group.
It showed green-yellow gas in a street. A man runs away from the gas cloud with a woman who is holding a cloth to her mouth. Another man in camouflage trousers and wearing a gas mask calls out for a car to assist the woman. A voice off screen says: “Chlorine gas bombing. Yellow smoke.”
Meanwhile, Earlier on Thursday, the army broke a 13-month rebel siege on Aleppo prison.
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