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Bomb Hits Elementary School in Ravaged Syrian City Children’s Art at Syria School, and Then a Bomb
(about 11 hours later)
BEIRUT, Lebanon — A barrel bomb tore into an elementary school in the northern city of Aleppo on Wednesday morning, just as an exhibit of children’s art was about to open, killing at least 18 people, including 10 students, residents and anti-government activists there said, blaming the attack on the government. BEIRUT, Lebanon — Organizers had worked until dawn hanging children’s artwork on the wall of an elementary school in Syria’s largest city: a bright green tank under a round yellow sun, a girl in pigtails defying a soldier’s bullets, a missile plunging from a warplane toward the school building.
Footage of the wrecked school posted online showed pools of blood, rubble and some of the children’s drawings, one of which depicted a warplane firing a missile over the school. But hours before the exhibit was to open on Wednesday, creating a rare space for children’s creativity in a ravaged district of the northern city of Aleppo, Syrian government aircraft bombarded the school, residents and anti-government activists said. At least 20 people, including 17 students and two teachers, were killed, they said, and many were wounded, including the school principal and the local artist who mounted the exhibit.
“These are terrorists!” a man cried in one video as he held a shock of hair clinging to part of a scalp, as another man in the video cried, “Five years old.” “She asked each one to draw what he dreams of,” said the distraught sister of the organizer, a painter and volunteer with a psychological support group called Fingerprints of Hope. The children’s art, she had written on the exhibit’s flier, reflected not only “blood and pain,” but also perseverance and hope that “stands as a blockade in front of death.”
Another man cursed insurgents who in recent days struck a deal with the government to restore electricity to government-held parts of the city in return for an end to bombardments of rebel-held areas, a part of the deal that apparently was not upheld on Wednesday. The attack was one of scores of aerial bombardments, including at least 85 barrel bombs, explosives-filled barrels dropped from helicopters that the government has unleashed on insurgent-held areas of Aleppo since the United Nations Security Council called in February for all parties to end such indiscriminate bombings. Hundreds have died.
The bombing came a day after mortar shells struck a technical school in government-held Damascus, killing at least 14 people and wounding more than 80. Unicef, the United Nations children’s agency, issued a statement condemning that attack and another, on the Damascus suburb of Adra, which killed three children in a camp for the displaced on Tuesday. It was the type of attack that opposition figures seek to halt with a renewed push for military aid to defend against aerial bombardments. Leaders of the armed opposition and the main exile opposition coalition plan to travel to Washington next week to push the Obama administration to lift its objections to allowing antiaircraft missiles to flow to insurgents deemed to be moderate, coalition officials said on Wednesday.
“Every day, across Syria, children who are simply trying to go about their everyday lives are being killed and maimed by indiscriminate attacks on populated areas”, said Maria Calivis, Unicef’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa. The goal is to push for antiaircraft and antitank missiles “and to change the American public opinion” regarding support for Syria’s armed opposition, said Bahia Mardini, a media adviser to the exile body, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.
“These attacks appear to be escalating, in complete disregard of all the calls that have been made to stop this insane cycle of violence, and to avoid similar breaches of international law.” A few American-made antitank missiles have reached insurgents recently, with American approval, but in numbers too small to make much difference in the tide of the battle. President Obama and the American public remain leery of deeper involvement, and the coalition’s inability to win more substantive aid has gutted its credibility with fighters on the ground.
Coalition members believe the moment is ripe to change that, contending that President Bashar al-Assad’s decision to run for re-election and the government’s continued obstruction of humanitarian aid to blockaded areas proves that the Syrian authorities have no interest in a negotiated solution to the three-year conflict that began with demands for political reform.
The delegation, led by the coalition president, Ahmed al-Jarba, plans to meet with Secretary of State John F. Kerry, Susan E. Rice, the national security adviser, and other White House and State Department officials, Ms. Mardini said. Monzer Akbik, Mr. Jarba’s chief of staff and a member of the planned delegation, said in a recent interview that concerns over antiaircraft missiles falling into extremist hands could be eased by equipping the weapons with devices allowing suppliers to track them and disable them remotely if necessary. “If anybody in this world wants to be in the business of saving lives, then this is the way,” he said.
Insurgents have long held large areas of northern Syria, but they, and civilians in areas they control, remain nearly defenseless against warplanes and helicopters. If that changed, Mr. Akbik said, the opposition could carve out safe spaces that it could govern and rebuild, potentially allowing some of the 2.5 million registered Syrian refugees to return home.
The Aleppo bombing came a day after mortar shells struck a school in government-held Damascus, killing at least 14 people and wounding more than 80, and a separate mortar attack killed three children in a camp for the displaced in the Damascus suburb of Adra; state media blamed insurgents. The reported death toll rose to 100, including women and children, in a double bombing on Tuesday in a government-controlled area of Homs.
“Every day, across Syria, children who are simply trying to go about their everyday lives are being killed and maimed by indiscriminate attacks on populated areas,” Unicef, the United Nations children’s agency, said in a statement, adding that attacks were escalating “in complete disregard” of international law and outcry.
In Aleppo, images of the wrecked Ein Jalout school showed pools of blood, collapsed walls, and a backhoe digging through rubble. A heart-shaped candy tin lay in a hallway painted with cartoon characters. Nearby was a slogan adopted early in the uprising to oppose sectarianism: “Religion for God; the nation for everyone.”
“These are terrorists?” a man cried in one video as he waved a shock of hair still clinging to part of a scalp. “Five years old.”
Another man cursed insurgents who recently struck a deal with the government to restore electricity to government-held parts of the city in return for an end to bombardments of rebel-held areas, a pact that apparently was not upheld on Wednesday.
Some of the artwork hanging on walls or strewn on bloody floors featured the bulging, wobbly and often exuberant crayon images typical of young children. In one, a tank crested an improbably green hill under a sun with spiky rays. Others were more sophisticated, like a pencil drawing of Aleppo’s ancient citadel.
In another, a gunman atop a pile of bloody bodies fired bullets at a girl holding a baby or a doll. A thought bubble above her says in a student’s English, “You have the area but Syria will still free and your president will be like this.” Nearby, a skeleton is labeled, “Bashar.”
The organizer’s sister, who declined to give their names for fear of reprisal, said that after seeing “faces full of exhaustion” on a school visit, her sister had bought the art supplies with her own money “to restore hope.”
The exhibit had been widely anticipated, bringing together children from several local schools, residents said. But instead of attending it, said Ahmed al-Ahmed, an activist, in a Skype interview, the survivors were now traumatized from seeing “the shreds of their friends.”