Syria crisis: Incendiary bomb victims 'like the walking dead'

[muriel_volestrangler]

A BBC team inside Syria filming for Panorama has witnessed the aftermath of a fresh horrific incident - an incendiary bomb dropped onto a school playground in the north of the country - which has left scores of children with napalm-like burns over their bodies.

Eyewitnesses describe a fighter jet dropping the device, a low explosion, followed by columns of fire and smoke.

Ian Pannell and cameraman Darren Conway's report contains images viewers may find extremely distressing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-23892594

This is the incident Reuters reported a couple of days ago, but then the only video was unconfirmed clips on YouTube:

Syria's opposition coalition said on Tuesday President Bashar al-Assad's forces had dropped phosphorus bombs and napalm on civilians in rural Aleppo on Monday, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens.

The alleged attack occurred as the United States and its European and Middle Eastern partners honed plans to punish Assad for a major poison gas attack last week on the suburbs of the capital, Damascus, that killed hundreds of civilians.

Video footage uploaded on the Internet, apparently of Monday's attack, showed doctors frantically smearing white cream on the reddened skin of several screaming people, many of them young boys.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/27/syria-crisis-opposition-phosphorus-idUSL6N0GS2ZJ20130827

[pnwmom]

1. Onto a playground???? n/t

[FarCenter]

2. Legally, phosphorous does not seem to be a chemical.

[Agnosticsherbet]

3. This is certainly one they can not blame on the rebels.

They have no Air Force to drop bombs.

[KittyWampus]

4. As I have been posting- Assad may technically have upper hand, he is not winning. The North/Coast

which was an Assad stronghold has been taken by rebels.

I posted this in my Journal days ago:


Syria rebels take control of strategic town (Northern/Coastal Syria-Assad Stronghold) Al Jazeera

Source: Al Jazeera

Syrian rebel forces have taken control of a strategic town in northern Syria, cutting off government forces' only supply route out of the city of Aleppo, the Syrian Observator for Human Rights has said.

snip
Meanwhile, residents in the central province of Homs said rebels also tried on Monday to retake the strategic town of Talkalakh, 4km from Lebanon's northern border. Its capture would allow rebels in the Homs countryside to replenish their supplies.

For weeks, Assad's forces had been on the offensive in Homs, a province they consider vital to securing their hold from Damascus to the president's coastal stronghold.

The coast is home to a large number of Assad's Alawite minority sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam, who are seen to be supportive of the president.

snip
Sectarian violence has increasingly overtaken a conflict that began as peaceful protests against four decades of Assad family rule but has now become an all-out civil war.

The sectarian dimension of the conflict has drawn in foreign fighters from neighbouring countries. Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah has sent fighters to join Assad's forces, angering Sunni Muslims in Lebanon and the region.

snip

Read more: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/08/2013826124946176888.html

[Skidmore]

5. Kicking this because of the sheer horror

of this attack.