16 KILLED AS SYRIA SCHOOL HIT BY REGIME AIRSTRIKE

         Beirut, 24 Dzulqa’idah 1434/ 30 September 2013 (MINA) – At least 16 people, most of them students, were killed in an airstrike that hit a secondary school in the rebel-held Syrian city of Raqqa on Sunday, activists said.

        Fighting continued in provinces across the country including in the outskirts of the capital Damascus, where rebels staged an assault that a monitoring group said killed at least 19 government fighters late on Saturday.

        Raqqa in northeastern Syria has been under the control of insurgents fighting to oust President Bashar Assad since March but the city remains subject to regular aerial bombardment by government forces, International Islamic News Agency (IINA) quoted by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

       The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group with a network of opposition sources across the country, said the death toll was at least 16 but that the number was likely to rise because some people were critically wounded.

         Opposition activists based in Raqqa, a city of around 250,000 people, published a list of 14 people they said were victims of the strike on the school and said there were more than 30 others wounded.

         Videos posted online by activists showed the bloody and charred remains of bodies said to have been from the airstrike in Raqqa. Some of the victims appeared to be young men, possibly in their teens. Fighting also continued in the southern Deraa province, a day after rebels in that area — including the Nusra Front — seized a former customs post on the southern border with Jordan.

         On the outskirts of the capital, an attack by rebels on military bases in the Qalamoun area killed at least 19 government fighters and wounded dozens of others, the Observatory said.(T/P08/E1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)