BEIRUT, Lebanon — Bombs that antigovernment activists said were dropped by a Syrian warplane on Sunday killed dozens of people at a bakery in the central town of Halfaya where residents had lined up for bread after the town received its first flour delivery in days.
The New York Times
A Syrian warplane was reported to have conducted airstrikes that killed dozens of people in Hilfaya, according to antigovernment activists in the area.
The attack, and the number of casualties, could not be immediately confirmed. A local activist said he ran to the bakery soon after he heard a warplane and then explosions and the sound of ambulances. “There were bodies everywhere,” the activist, Samer, said.
Photographs he took after the attack showed bodies in a heap on a bloody sidewalk outside a low-slung building, which was damaged but still standing. Amateur video of what the activists said was the aftermath of the attack showed a man sitting near a motorcycle, his arm twisted around his back, struggling to stand as people around him screamed. Roughly a dozen people could be seen on the ground, covered in dirt or debris from the building; some were wounded, and several appeared to be dead. Armed men wearing camouflage outfits were helping to move the bodies, which were placed in bunches on truck beds.
The reasons for the attack were unclear, but activists speculated that it was a government response to the arrival in Halfaya of rebel fighters. The rebels occupied the town last week after embarking on a broad offensive to seize territory around the city of Hama, where the government has kept tight control after suppressing protests in the city last year. In days of fighting, civilians have been caught between the warring sides, a volatile development in a part of the country where members of Syria’s many sects live among one another in neighboring villages.
Human rights groups have accused the government of indiscriminate attacks on or near bakeries in the past, especially in the northern city of Aleppo. In a three-week period in the summer, Human Rights Watch documented 10 separate bombings on bakeries in the city.
The attack on Sunday occurred as the international envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, arrived in the capital, Damascus, where he was expected to meet with President Bashar al-Assad. His visit had been rumored but not previously announced, signaling concerns about security as the fighting between opposition fighters and the government intensified in the capital.
Mr. Brahimi made no public comment on Sunday, and the Syrian information minister said during a news conference that he had no knowledge of the envoy’s visit. Mr. Brahimi traveled by land from Beirut because of fighting between the rebels and government forces near the airport in Damascus, Lebanese airport officials told The Associated Press.
His visit was likely to increase speculation about a deal to remove Mr. Assad from power. The talk has grown as rebel forces have claimed gains near government strongholds.
Russia, one of Syria’s most reliable allies, has recently sent signals that it is distancing itself from the Syrian president. On Saturday, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said several countries in the region had offered Mr. Assad asylum, but he added that Moscow would not mediate on their behalf.
It was the third visit to Syria by Mr. Brahimi since he took his post in August, and it occurred as fighting grew worse in the eastern and southern suburbs of Damascus, where rebel commanders say they are trying to establish staging grounds for attacks on the capital.
Central Syria has become the latest front in the war, with the rebels attacking government checkpoints and other positions in an effort to disrupt the military’s supply lines and to push south from opposition strongholds in northern Syria. The offensive has led to growing fears for civilians in the area.
On Friday, a group of rebel fighters posted a video in which they threatened to shell Christian villages unless residents forced government loyalists to leave. Local church leaders have pleaded for peace and an end to sectarian strife.
Before the bombing on Sunday, Halfaya had been repeatedly shelled from loyalist positions in a nearby village, activists said.
In some photographs that Samer, the activist, said he took at the bakery, one fighter, with his hands resting on his head, stared in shock at the bodies around him. Another carried body parts. Bystanders searched for survivors under the rubble. Another man picked up a piece of bread lying next to someone’s slippers.
In amateur video apparently shot in a hospital, doctors tended to bleeding men lying on the floor, a teenage boy slumped against a wall and a woman lay on her side on a gurney. Antigovernment groups said 60 to 90 people were killed, but the toll was impossible to confirm. The bakery was one of three in the city, activists said. When word spread on Sunday that a flour shipment from Turkey had come in, people began lining up around noon, waiting for their turn at its windows for bread after a stretch of days when the bakeries had been idled.
After the bombings, rebel fighters released a statement vowing revenge.
