Syria buried this Friday the soldiers and their families killed in the drone attack perpetrated on Thursday against a graduation ceremony for officers that left a hundred dead in Homs and to which Damascus responded with intense bombings in rebel areas.
Dozens of relatives of the victims gathered early in the morning, with contorted faces, in front of the military hospital in Homs, from where ambulances began transporting the remains of the officers and their families to their final resting place, according to a journalist from the AFP agency.
“My son, don’t get in the car, don’t leave, stay close to me,” shouted a mother, distraught with pain. Soldiers wearing flower crowns preceded the coffins to the sound of military music.
Defense Minister Ali Mahmoud Abbas, who left the ceremony on Thursday shortly before the drone attack, attended the funeral of around thirty soldiers and civilians in Homs. “The blood of the martyrs who yesterday paid with their lives is very expensive, but the country is even more expensive,” he stated.
The attack on the military academy in Homs, attributed by Damascus to “terrorist organizations”, left 89 dead, including 31 women and five children, in addition to 277 wounded, according to a report by the Syrian authorities.
However, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), an organization based in the United Kingdom and with a wide network of sources in Syria, gave a higher estimate, stating that the attack killed 123 people, including 54 civilians, among them. They included 39 children, and about 150 injured.
So far no group has claimed responsibility for this “unprecedented” action against targets of forces loyal to the Syrian president. Jihadist groups that control part of Syrian territory sometimes use armed drones to carry out attacks.
Government forces responded to the attack with bombings targeting the country’s last rebel stronghold in the northwest since Thursday afternoon. The OSDH reported 15 civilian deaths.
Syrian government forces have been in full control of the city since 2014, when the rebels withdrew from the center under a truce agreement mediated by the UN, since after the popular uprisings of 2011 the city had become an opposition fiefdom. . Homs province has been fully under the control of the Syrian regime since 2018.
