Syria Cluster Bomb Attack 'Kills 10 Children'

AFRIK UPDATE

A government jet has dropped a cluster bomb on a playground, leaving 10 children dead.

The children were killed when a MiG fighter bombed a playground in the village of Deir al-Asafir, east of Damascus, opposition activists said.

Further footage of the playground attack showed what appeared to be cluster bomblets on the ground. In one video, two girls could be seen lying dead in a street while another showed a distraught mother standing, apparently inside a clinic, over her daughter's lifeless body.

Two cluster bombs were dropped on the village, activists said. One man told Reuters news agency that 70 bomblets had been found.

"None of those killed was older than 15 years old," Abu Kassem, an activist in Deir al-Asafir told Reuters.

He said 15 people had been wounded in the attack and denied that rebel fighters were inside the village. They had been operating on the outskirts, he said.

In recent months there have been mounting allegations that the Syrian government has resorted to using cluster bombs as the conflict 

Rebel fighters said on Sunday they had captured a military airbase at Marj al-Sultan, not far from Deir al-Asafir, although activists of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said they had later pulled out.

Amateur video showed a rebel standing beside a wrecked helicopter while a man speaking on the video said a warplane had been blown up.

Unverified videos posted on the internet on Monday showed fighters claiming to be in control of the Tishreen dam on the Euphrates river, further north in Aleppo province. There has been fierce fighting in the area around the dam for several days.