BEIRUT: Fierce government bombardment of an opposition-controlled Syrian town has killed 43 people, among them children and medical staff, a monitoring group said Sunday in a new toll.
Hours of air strikes and shelling on Saturday struck Jayrud, 60 kilometres (35 miles) northeast of Damascus, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said two medics were among the dead, as well as women and children. One of those killed was Amjad al-Danaf, head of Jayrud’s medical centre.
Activists mourned him online and said he was killed in an air raid as he was trying to treat residents wounded in the attacks.
The bombardment — the first on Jayrud in at least two years — began after Syria’s armed forces said Islamist militants killed a government pilot when he was forced to eject from his plane on Friday.
In a statement, the military had pledged that the attack on its pilot “will not go unpunished”. Early Sunday, Abdel Rahman said prominent figures in Jayrud had reached an agreement with government officials that rebel fighters would leave the town and hand over the pilot’s body in exchange for a halt to the shelling.
