More than 80 reported killed in drone attack on Syria military academy ceremony

BEIRUT — A drone attack Thursday struck a packed graduating ceremony for military officers in the Syrian city of Homs, killing at least 80 people including civilians and military personnel and wounding dozens of others, Syrian state television reported.

Syria’s military said in a statement that drones laden with explosives targeted the ceremony as it came to an end. They accused insurgents “backed by known international forces” for the attack, and said that some of the wounded were in critical condition, including women and children.

Health Minister Hassan al-Ghabash said that 80 people were killed and 240 wounded, and that a number of civilians — including six children — were among those killed. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition war monitor that claims a vast network of sources in Syria but has been accused of inflating casualty numbers, reported “more than 100 dead, including military personnel and at least 14 civilians,” and dozens more wounded.

Syria’s pro-government Shams TV reported 66 killed and 190 wounded in the attack. Syria’s defense minister had attended the ceremony, but left some 20 minutes before the attack, Lebanon’s al-Meyadeen, another pro-regime outlet, reported.

The Syrian military in its statement said “that it will respond with full force and decisiveness to these terrorist organizations wherever they exist.”

First image of the aftermath of the drone attack against the military college in Homs, #Syria. Several high-ranking military officers were killed, and initial reports there are more than 100 casualties. pic.twitter.com/H4qSZSz75T

— Michael A. Horowitz (@michaelh992) October 5, 2023

Early Thursday, the Syrian government shelled a village in the rebel-held northwestern part of the country, killing at least five civilians, activists and emergency workers said.

The shelling, which comes amid a rise in strikes in the rebel-held enclave in recent days, hit a family house on the outskirts of the the village of Kafr Nouran in western Aleppo province, according to opposition-held northwestern Syria’s civil defense organization known as the White Helmets.

The dead included an older woman and three of her daughters and her son, according to the Observatory. Nine others from the family were wounded, it said.

Neither Syria nor its key military ally Russia commented on the shelling, but Damascus says strikes in the northwestern province target armed insurgent groups. The Syrian pro-government newspaper Al-Watan said the Syrian army had targeted the al-Qaeda-linked militant group Hayat Tahrir al Sham in response to its shelling of government forces’ positions in southern Idlib.

The White Helmets say the Syrian government strikes have increased this past week, including shelling in the city of Sarmeen on Tuesday that hit a school and mosque, killing at least six people. The first responders also said that shelling hit a house and farmland in Binnish near Idlib city, but didn’t cite any casualties.

Northwestern Syria is mostly held by HTS, as well as Turkish-backed forces.

The vast majority of around 4.1 million people residing in the enclave live in poverty, most relying on humanitarian aid to survive. Many of them are internally displaced Syrians.

Meanwhile, local authorities in northeastern Syria under US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said 15 Turkish drone attacks Thursday struck oil fields and infrastructure across the enclave in Hassakeh and Qamishli provinces, including oil production facilities, electrical substations and a dam.

A statement from the authorities — known as the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria — said that six members of the security forces and two civilians were killed. Three other civilians were wounded.
Turkish authorities didn’t immediately comment on the strikes.

Oil fields in #northeasternSyria have been targeted by #Turkish drones since this morning pic.twitter.com/1KnDdobnCz

— MOHAMMAD HASAN (@MHJournalist) October 5, 2023

Ankara says the main Syrian Kurdish militia is allied with Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has led an insurgency against Turkey since 1984 that has killed tens of thousands of people. Ankara has declared the PKK a terrorist group.

Syrian Kurdish forces were a major US ally in the war against the militant Islamic State group, which was defeated in Syria in March 2019.