At least 6 kids dead in attack on kindergarten near Damascus

At least six children were killed on Sunday in Syrian government shelling that hit a kindergarten in the rebel-held town of Harasta outside the capital Damascus, a monitor said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said 17 people, most of them children, were also injured in the shelling.

An AFP photographer saw the body of one child, a girl, lying on a bed at a makeshift hospital, her face bloodied and her clothes torn.

At the kindergarten, smears of blood were left on the tiled floor, underneath a small red slide propped against a wall painted with children’s drawings.

Harasta is in the rebel stronghold of Eastern Ghouta, outside Damascus, a region that is regularly targeted by government air strikes and shelling.

Ghouta was the site of a deadly chemical weapons attack by Syrian government forces in August 2013. According to an assessment by the US government shortly after the attack, 1,429 were killed, including at least 426 children.

More than 300,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests.