BEIRUT: Syrian government shelling of a rebel-held town killed 31 people, including two medics, on Saturday, as a two-year local truce broke down after suspected Al-Qaeda militants killed a captured regime pilot.
The bombardment struck the town of Jayrud, 60 km northeast of Damascus, where the army says rebels killed the pilot after he was forced to eject on Friday.
In its statement about the incident, the military said the attack “will not go unpunished.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Saturday’s attack was the first bombardment of the town in at least two years.
“Prominent figures in Jayrud have had a local truce with the regime for at least two years, and neither fired on each other,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
He said at least 31 people were killed, including two medics. It was not immediately clear how many of the rest were civilians.
Activists in the town said the head of the local medical center and several colleagues were killed.
“There have been at least 45 air strikes today. The town’s medical center was hit and its director Amjad Al-Danaf was killed,” activist Abu Malek Al-Jayrudi told AFP via the Internet.
He said the town is home to some 60,000 people and that the bombardment had not stopped since early Saturday.
According to the Observatory, three Syrian officers were killed on Friday when their helicopter crashed in the south, near territory held by Daesh.
Abdel Rahman said government forces had managed to recover the bodies of the victims of the crash, the cause of which remained unclear.
“We don’t know if it was a technical issue or not, but the bodies are with the regime,” Abdel Rahman said.
Dozens of local truces have been brokered between the myriad of armed groups fighting in Syria’s increasingly complex civil war.
2 medics among 31 slain in Syrian reprisal for pilot’s killing by Al-Qaeda
2 medics among 31 slain in Syrian reprisal for pilot’s killing by Al-Qaeda
