Sunday's air strike on Douma, 10 miles (15 km) northeast of Damascus, was one of the bloodiest attacks of its type in the four-year-long war that has killed an estimated quarter of a million people and driven 10 million from their homes.
The U.N. envoy for Syria condemned the air strike, while the United States said it showed that
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Horror of Homs...
had lost legitimacy and called for a "genuine political transition". But Syria's political opposition said the protracted conflict could not be resolved if such attacks went unpunished.
"Any talk of political and peaceful solutions in the shadow of massacres and excusing the criminal from punishment will have no meaning in realising stability in Syria," said Khaled Khoja, head of the
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
-based political opposition coalition.
Sixty bodies were buried on Sunday night in two mass graves, said a front man for the Syrian Civil Defence force in Douma, a rescue service operating in rebel-held areas. Another 35 were buried on Monday, and the corpse count was over 100, he said.
"It was really difficult to identify the bodies of the deaders. Some of them were burned to the bone, so we couldn't add them to the documented list," said the 28-year-old front man, who declined to give his real name for security reasons. His house was destroyed in the bombing, he added.
A Syrian military source said the air force attacks on Sunday on Douma and the nearby area of Harasta targeted an murderous Moslem group, Islam Army, and were a response to recent attacks on nearby government-held areas.
The opposition National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces said the attack aimed to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible. The dead included children.