At least 16 civilians were killed in violence in Syria’s second city of Aleppo on Saturday, residents and a monitoring group said.
Residents found children “torn apart” after a helicopter from the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dumped a barrel bomb on a rebel-held area, a local man said.
At least 13 people were killed and 17 wounded in the raid on Maadi in northeastern Aleppo, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Photo: AFP
In another part of the city, three children died and a dozen people were wounded when rebel rockets struck a regime-held district, the observatory said.
The monitoring group said the Maadi deaths happened when the regime aircraft “dumped a barrel bomb of explosives on a building.”
The death toll could rise because of the number of seriously injured people, it said.
The observatory reported the death of only one child, but the resident said at least four were killed.
A journalist on the scene saw a building with its roof caved in and other major damage, while debris was strewn all around.
Civil defense volunteers from the rebel districts hastened to clear the rubble by hand and unearthed a man’s body with a bloody head, covered in white dust.
Other volunteers pulled back rubble with a pickaxe while a child-sized body in a plastic cover was taken away on a stretcher.
Local people gathered up what was left of boxes of fruit and vegetables spread out over the road.
The residents said the raid happened early in the morning.
“People were asleep... A grandfather emerged safe and sound, but his three sons, all married, and their children — we still don’t know what has happened to them,” one resident said.
“They found four children torn apart after the helicopter dumped its barrel bomb, may God curse him,” the man said, referring to al-Assad, the focus of a three-year rebellion.
Residents said the raid appeared to target a district where a popular market is located.
Last month, Human Rights Watch said the number of rebel sectors hit by barrel bombs had almost doubled in five months.
The regime has pressed on with its barrel-bomb campaign despite a UN resolution on Feb. 22 barring their indiscriminate use in populated areas.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
STILL IN POWER: US intelligence reports showed that the Iranian regime is not in danger of collapse and retains control of the public, casting doubt on Trump’s exit Nearly every US Senate Democrat on Wednesday signed a letter sent to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth requesting a “swift investigation” of airstrikes on a girls’ school in Iran that killed scores of children and any other potential US military actions causing civilian harm. Reuters reported on Thursday last week that US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for the Feb. 28 strike on the school, as US and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran. “The results of this school attack are horrific. The majority of those killed in the strikes were girls between the ages
RSS