Los Angeles Times –
BEIRUT — Air attacks by the Syrian government killed at least 30 people Wednesday in the rebel-controlled town of Azaz in one of the bloodiest days in the country’s ongoing conflict, according to activists.
The town, north of the city of Aleppo and just a few miles from the Turkish border, was pounded for hours by warplanes that left homes flattened and about 200 people injured, regime opponents reported. Azaz has been the target of many previous attacks by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.
“They are still removing bodies and taking the injured to Turkey,” said Khalid Yassin, an activist in the nearby town of Tal Rifat. “There is a huge wave of exodus from the town.”
He said he had spoken to residents during the day but that cellphone communications were extremely limited.
Online videos said to be taken in the town showed residents pulling victims out from under rubble, several of them children.
The fatalities were among almost 200 reported killed across Syria on Wednesday in ongoing bloodshed — almost half the victims were in Aleppo and its suburbs — and they included 23 people slain execution-style in fields in the suburbs of the capital Damascus, according to activists.
The violence also spilled over into neighboring Lebanon, where more than 20 Syrians and at least one Turkish man were kidnapped in retaliation for the capture of what Free Syrian Army rebels said was a Hezbollah operative.
Speaking on Lebanese TV, family members of Hasan Mokdad, who was shown earlier in an online video being held by a group of armed rebel fighters, said they have responded to the kidnapping in a similar manner.
“For Hasan, we are willing to kidnap 2 million Syrians,” one family member said.
The family released its own video showing several Syrian men who said they were working in Lebanon with the rebels, helping to smuggle weapons across the border.
The Lebanese information ministry quoted family members of the powerful Shiite clan as vowing to continue their actions until Hasan Mokdad is released.
“We have barely executed 1 percent of our goals until now. We know the names of those hosting members of the Syrian Free Army, and we are capable of reaching them in Aley, Tripoli and Iqlim el Kharoub in case of any act against us,” a family representative told an official news agency, listing various Lebanese locations.
But Lebanese President Michel Suleiman warned against threatening the safety of those inside Lebanon, regardless of national origin. “Spreading of chaos does not bring back any kidnapped nor restore any right; instead, it shatters all rights and endangers the lives of citizens,” he said.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have been supporting the Syrian rebels, warned their citizens to leave Lebanon.
Meanwhile, three people were injured in a bombing Wednesday in Syria’s capital that struck near a military compound and the hotel where United Nations monitors have been staying.
The Free Syrian Army took responsibility for the blast, which reportedly targeted a meeting of military officers at the compound in the heavily guarded Arkan neighborhood of Damascus and suggested that top officials remain vulnerable to such rebel attacks.
No U.N. monitors staying at the nearby Dama Rose hotel were injured in the explosion, which occurred as their four-month monitoring mission was ending.
“We promise this criminal regime more targeted and large operations to come inside the capital that will break its back, until it reaches the presidential palace,” read a joint statement by two FSA militias.
The FSA said it received inside help in the bombing. An explosion last month that killed four of Assad’s top security officials was also thought to have had inside help.
“The terrorist explosion is another attempt by those who seek to distort the civilized image of Syria and its people,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Fayssal Mekdad, speaking to reporters at the Dama Rose hotel.
Also Wednesday, a United Nations Human Rights Council panel reported that Syrian government forces and allied militias have waged a brutal campaign of murder, torture, rape and indiscriminate shelling of Syrian civilians. The actions amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, the panel said.
Rebels also committed war crimes, including murder, torture and unlawful killings, the panel concluded, but not on the same scale or with the same frequency as government forces, the panel determined.
Activists say more than 17,000 people have died in the ongoing violence; the Syrian government says about 8,000 government forces and civilians have died as of early July.