82 killed in Syrian airstrikes

Attack on crowded market injures at least 200, activists say

Jordanian soldiers stand guard in Mafraq, Jordan, near the Syrian border Sunday.
Jordanian soldiers stand guard in Mafraq, Jordan, near the Syrian border Sunday.

ANTAKYA, Turkey -- Syrian government airstrikes on a rebel-held suburb of the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Sunday killed more than 80 people and wounded about 200, according to local activists and monitoring organizations.

The attacks struck a crowded market area in the city of Douma, leaving streets strewn with rubble, scattered merchandise and destroyed cars. Anti-government activists in the area posted videos online of blood-covered victims being raced to local clinics and rows of dead bodies lined up for burial.

Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said warplanes fired a missile at the market and then launched another after people rushed in to retrieve the wounded.

Abdurrahman, whose group relies on a network of activists around the country, said a total of four missiles were fired on the market, killing 82 people and wounding more than 200. He said the death toll is expected to rise because many of the wounded are in critical condition.

The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said the air raids killed at least 100 and wounded about 300, adding that rescue workers are digging through the rubble in search of survivors. Discrepancies in death tolls immediately after an attack are common in Syria.

The death toll in Douma puts the strike among the deadliest air attacks during more than four years of conflict in Syria, in which more than a quarter million people have been killed and about half the population has been displaced, according to the United Nations.

The war in Syria, which began as a popular uprising against the government of President Bashar Assad, has grown increasingly complicated. Government forces are a mix of army units, militias and militants from Hezbollah in Lebanon, who consider Assad a key ally. They are fighting a rebel movement made up of an array of groups, including hard-line Islamists and fighters from al-Qaida. And much of the country's north and east are controlled by the extremist Islamic State group.

While Assad's government has killed thousands of civilians in airstrikes on rebel-held areas, such high casualties from single incidents have grown less common.

Syrian state news media did not mention the attack, although government forces have long bombed opposition areas to try to undercut local support for the rebels.

On Sunday, the commander of Jordan's Border Guard said in an interview that militants have tried to sneak into Jordan from Syria by blending in with Syrian refugees, while smugglers have stepped up efforts to bring weapons and drugs into the kingdom.

Over the past year, Western ally Jordan has been thrust onto the front lines of the battle against Islamic State extremists who have seized one-third of neighboring Syria and Iraq. Jordan's role, including participation in a U.S.-led campaign of air strikes on Islamic State targets, has raised concerns the kingdom could be targeted by the militants.

The commander of the Border Guard, Brig. Gen. Saber al-Mahayreh, said his forces have so far blocked all infiltrators and smugglers, but that he expects more attempts because of the deteriorating security situation in Syria and Iraq.

This month, Syrian smugglers were intercepted by his forces with more than one ton of drugs, including hashish, and automatic weapons, he said, adding that it was one of the largest busts to date.

Jordan's borders are monitored by a partially U.S.-funded surveillance system of drones, radar and watch towers that can "spot a rabbit" trying to cross into the country, the commander said.

Border guards can potentially detect suspected infiltrators as far as 9 miles from the border, he said. The images sent back from the border area are monitored in operations rooms in Jordan, including at the Border Guard headquarters on the outskirts of the northern town of Zarqa.

"It is not possible for any terrorist groups to enter Jordan," he said at the headquarters.

The Syrian uprising began in March 2011 with mostly peaceful protests and escalated into a civil war after a brutal government crackdown. More than 4 million Syrians have fled the country, including about 630,000 who settled in Jordan. In Iraq, weakened by sectarian strife, Islamic State launched its swift land grab a year ago.

At the height of the Syrian refugee crisis in 2012 and 2013, hundreds entered Jordan every day at informal crossing points along the border.

Since then, Jordan has tightened control, reducing the number of potential entry points from 45 to five, including three along the western stretch of the border for wounded people and two on the eastern stretch for refugees, said another border officer, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

Information for this article was contributed by Ben Hubbard and Maher Samaan of The New York Times and by Karin Laub and Bassem Mroue of The Associated Press.

A Section on 08/17/2015

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