Car bombing in Syria kills 43 evacuees

Rashidin, April 15 

A suicide car bomb attack on buses carrying Syrians evacuated from two besieged government-held towns killed 43 persons today, as US-backed fighters advanced in their push towards the Islamic State group’s Raqa stronghold.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the blast targeted buses carrying residents evacuated from the northern towns of Fuaa and Kafraya under a deal reached between the regime and rebels.

Bodies were still being recovered from the attack at a transit point in Rashidin, west of Aleppo, according to the Observatory. “The suicide bomber was driving a van supposedly carrying aid supplies and detonated near the buses,” monitoring group said.

It said that most of the dead were evacuees, but also included several rebels who had been guarding the buses.

Thousands of evacuees had been stuck on the road because of a disagreement over the number of rebels allowed to leave two other towns included in the deal, but the process restarted following the blast, the Observatory said. AFP's reporter in rebel-held Rashidin saw several bodies, body parts and blood scattered on the ground.

The bombing took place as thousands of evacuees from Fuaa and Kafraya waited to continue their journey to regime- controlled Aleppo, the coastal province of Latakia, or Damascus.

More than 5,000 people who had lived under crippling siege for more than two years left the two towns, along with 2,200 evacuated from rebel-held Madaya and Zabadani, yesterday. — AFP