Hungry children were lured by food, then a suicide car bomb was detonated
A heinous attack on children by anti-government fighters? Nope, just ‘Assad supporters’ killed in a ‘war between Sunni and Shia’
What really happened:
The civilians in their buses, mostly elderly, women and children, were guarded by “rebels” of Ahrar al Sham. They were hungry. Someone appeared on the scene and distributed crisps. When children flocked around the food distribution a blue car drove up and a very large explosion occurred. Four buses full of people and a number of cars were totally destroyed (Pics: 1, 2, 3)
127 of the civilians, only a mile or two from the safe government area, were killed in the suicide attack including 95 children. Many more were wounded. An unknown number of Ahrar al Sham “rebel” guards were also killed.
These would be civilians from a small Shia enclave in Idlib under siege by Salafist jihadis. Being Shia, the Salafists rebels consider it their religious duty to murder and enslave them. (As “apostates” the option of “converting” is not open to them.)
That evacuation actually happened was a small miracle in itself — the last time it was attempted, the buses supposed to do it were burned on the way there. This time they were hit going back when they were full people.
Nothing comparable has ever happened during government evacuations. (Moreover those who are not evacuated from rebel-held enclaves are not murdered and enslaved but amnestied and reintegrated.)
What happened according to CNN:
0:00 “Dozens of supporters of president Bashar al-Assad are the latest victim of Syria’s brutal civil war.”
No mention of who may have actually carried out the attack (bin Ladenite groups the US has been using as a battering ram against the Syrian state). A reminder this is a “brutal” civil war so no need to get overly horrified. And these are not hungry children, they’re “Assad supporters”.
A short glimpse of the aftermath and we’re off to a reporter who gives the absolutely false context for the attack as it being a part of a two-sided Sunni-Shia “sectarian violence”. Then laments the evacuation of Shia civilians besieged by Salafist fanatics for “permanently changing the ethnic and demographic map” which has been a rebel talking point against evacuations even as they’re set on changing the demographics by murdering and forcibly converting apostates and infidels.
0:47 “A lot of issues here involve a sectarian nature of violence, the Syrian regime being predominantly Shia with Shia supporters and the rebels being Sunni”
2:26 “Sunnis are leaving areas surrounded by Shias and Shias are leaving areas surrounded by Sunnis, the country is sort of splitting in two”