RTSat, 15 Apr 2017 18:40 UTC
© ReutersStill image shows bodies lying near burnt out buses in what is said to be Aleppo's outskirts, Syria April 15, 2017
Syrian state TV said an unknown number of people had been killed and wounded.
Pictures have emerged on social media purporting to show the aftermath of the blast.
Humanitarian workers were among the victims of the attack, according to Arabic
Asharq Al-Awsat.
Very graphic footage from the scene posted
online shows burned out vehicles with the dead lying on the ground and inside buses, some covered with blankets.
"A very powerful blast" killed "many women and children" inside the buses, an eyewitness said while filming the video. There were also fighters from the Free Syrian Army and other groups who were securing the area among the victims, he added.
No one knows the exact number of the victims yet, the eyewitness said, claiming that "there are more dead people inside the buses."
Photos from the scene show bodies near blackened buses with blown out windows.
The bus convoy was transporting up to 5,000 residents from the mostly Shiite villages of Fua and Kefraya.
The attack took place on the outskirts of Aleppo in the Rashidin area while the convoy was waiting to enter the city.
The buses were waiting to take people who were evacuated from the two Shiite villages on Friday from rebel-held territory into the government-controlled city.The residents, along with hundreds of pro-government fighters, had come from the two rebel-besieged villages in northwest Idlib province, Reuters reported. In exchange, hundreds of Sunni insurgents and their families moved out of government-controlled areas near Damascus, Syria's capital.
However, a delay in the agreement has reportedly left thousands of evacuated people stranded at two transit points on Aleppo's outskirts since late Friday.
Comment: Tragedy has struck Syria as a
suicide attack kills and injures civilians being evacuated from the embattled towns of Fua and Kefraya to Aleppo. The current
death toll stands at 70 with 130 people injured. Among the dead, more than half are thought to be children. The number of casualties are expected to rise.
According to a witness,
"A suicide bomber blew himself up in car in Rashidin near a petrol station, where buses with the Fua and Kefraya residents stopped. There are dead and wounded".
...
Today's deadly attack on unarmed civilians is the most strident example of terrorists trying to thwart the attempts to evacuate civilians from Idlib.
Earlier in the day, a source told Sputnik that a
suicide attacker detonated a car bomb in the Rashidin neighborhood of Aleppo near a convoy of buses carrying civilians
evacuated from the Syrian Shiite towns of Fua and Kefraya. At least 70 people were reportedly killed, with many women and children among them.
"Terrorists are not letting people flee from the territory toward Aleppo and are preventing evacuation of Fua and Kefraya residents [from militants-held Rashidin neighborhood near Aleppo]," the source said.
Update: Video has
emerged of the immediate aftermath of the suicide bombing:
Update 2: Death Toll From Syria Car Bomb Rises To Over 100
The death toll from a car-bomb attack on buses carrying Syrians evacuated from two government-held towns has risen to at least 112, according to a monitoring group.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 98 evacuees from two northern towns were killed when an explosives-laden vehicle hit their buses at a transit point west of Aleppo on April 15.
The remainder of the dead were aid workers and rebels tasked with guarding the buses, the Britain-based group said.
The group said the number of dead was expected to rise.
Update 3: According to rebel sources (i.e. SOHR), the death toll is 126, including 68 children and 13 women. Despite the massacre, the evacuation is planned to
proceed.
People need to see what this sort of carnage really looks like.