Russian air raid hits school, killing 22 children

Air strikes hit an elementary school in rebel-held Idlib province in northwest Syria on Wednesday, killing at least 35 civilians including 22 children. Local media and civic groups claimed that Russia and government troops halted their strike on rebel-held Aleppo but changed their target to Idlib.

The raids hit Hass, Idlib province, about 60 kilometers southwest from Alepo, around 11:30 a.m. “One rocket hit the entrance of the school as students were leaving to go home, after the school administration decided to end classes for the day because of the raids,” AFP quoted a civic activist as saying. A gruesome photo showing a child's arm, seared off above the elbow, still clutching the strap of a dusty black rucksack, was circulating on social media.

“This is a tragedy. It is an outrage. And if deliberate, it is a war crime,” UNICEF director Anthony Lake said in a statement. “This latest atrocity may be the deadliest attack on a school since the war began more than five years ago,” he said. Russia and the Syrian government troops are suspected of having conducted the strike despite their knowledge that the target was a school.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that warplanes -- either Russia or Syrian – concentrated on conducting air raids on the area for several weeks. The latest attacks took 89 civilians in air strikes on Idlib province in the past week while attacks on Aleppo abated, as rebels who caved in to the new Syrian government troops’ surrounding had been gathering in Idlib. Radical rebels including the Fateh al-Sham Front, which the United States labeled as a terrorist group, also entered the region.

“It's horrible, horrible. I hope we were not involved,” Russian UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters. “It’s easy for me to say ‘no’ but I’m a responsible person. I need to see what our minister of defence is going to say.” Some 80 international human rights groups, including the Human Rights Watch, have urged U.N. member states to exclude Russia from the Geneva-based Human Rights Council over its military campaign in Syria, according to an al-Jazeera report.

조은아 기자achim@donga.com