68 Kids Among 126 Killed After Blast Rocks Bus Convoy in Syria

A military media unit said a suicide attacker had detonated a car bomb near the convoy.

This frame grab from video provided by the Thiqa News Agency, shows a gunman passing by the buses that were damaged in a blast outside Aleppo. (Photo Courtesy: AP)

An explosion near a bus convoy waiting to enter the Syrian city of Aleppo killed or wounded several people on Saturday, pro-government media outlets, pro-opposition activists and a monitor reported.

The death toll reached at least 126 on Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said on Sunday.

Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory, said the dead included 109 people from Foua and Kfarya, among them 68 children and 13 women.

A military media unit run by Damascus ally Hezbollah said a suicide attacker had detonated a car bomb near the convoy.

Pictures posted on state media showed what appeared to be the aftermath of the explosion, with bodies lying on the ground and fires belching out thick black plumes of smoke. Buses were blackened by the blast with their windows blown out.

The blast hit the Rashidin area on Aleppo's outskirts, where dozens of buses carrying mostly Shia residents of two villages that are being evacuated in a deal between warring sides were waiting to enter the city.

(With inputs from Reuters and AP.)

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