Scores of Syrians were killed or wounded Thursday when drones struck a graduation ceremony for army officers in Homs, according to reports by a war monitoring organization and a statement from Syria’s defense ministry. It was unclear who was responsible for the carnage.
The army confirmed that drones strapped with explosives wreaked havoc on the graduation ceremony as it was ending. Army officials did not provide an official tally of the casualties but did say that women and children were among those in critical condition.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based watchdog, estimated that 60 officers and civilians were slain and 120 attendees were wounded. One pro-government radio station said 66 died and 190 were injured.
Syria’s government called for a three-day state of mourning, to begin Friday.
The military blamed extremists “backed by known international forces” for the attack, without singling out a particular entity, and promised that “it will respond with full force and decisiveness to these terrorist organizations, wherever they exist.”
After the attack, the government bombed towns in Idlib, a rebel-held northwestern province. How many casualties resulted from the shellings there was unknown.
Earlier Thursday, the government shelled another village in the area, hitting a family house and killing an elderly woman and four of her children as well as aid workers, according to the White Helmets, a volunteer civil defense organization working in northwestern Syria.
The White Helmets said nine civilians were wounded.
The country’s northwest is occupied by al-Qaida-linked militants and Turkish-sponsored opposition fighters. Most who live there are very poor and rely on humanitarian aid to survive.
Also Thursday, drones attacked oil production plants, electrical substations and a dam in the Hasakah and Qamishli provinces of northeastern Syria, which are held by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.
Local authorities said six SDF fighters and two civilians died in the bombardment.
A U.N. spokesperson said Thursday that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “deeply concerned about the drone attack on a military academy graduation ceremony in Homs. … The secretary-general is also deeply concerned about reports of retaliatory shelling on multiple locations in northwest Syria and emerging reports of casualties.”
The spokesperson called on all sides to protect civilians, saying that Guterres “strongly condemns all violence in Syria and urges all parties to respect their obligations under international law.”
According to Reuters, Syria's defense minister attended the ceremony but left minutes before the attack, according to “a Syrian security source and a security source in the regional alliance backing the Damascus government against opposition groups.”
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
