More than 80 students were killed when two explosions rocked a university in Syria’s largest city yesterday, the embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad said.
Assad and rebels blamed each other.
Insurgents said Assad’s forces carried out two airstrikes on the University of Aleppo, while state media blamed “terrorists” for launching the rockets.
Syria’s UN ambassador, Bashar Ja’afari, told the Security Council that 82 people died and 162 people were wounded in the blasts.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 83 died.
The explosions set cars ablaze and blew the walls off dormitory rooms at the university, which lies in the Assad-controlled northwest section of Aleppo.
Meanwhile, more than 50 countries yesterday asked the Security Council to refer the 2-year-old Syrian civil war to the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes people for genocide. But Russia, Assad’s long-standing ally, blocked the initiative.
The attack also came as the magazine Foreign Policy reported that US diplomats believe Assad used chemical weapons against his own people.
Scot Frederic Kilmer, the US consul general in Istanbul, signed a cable last week, stating that there’s a “compelling case” that chemical weapons were used in Homs on Dec. 23, according to Foreign Policy.
The White House downplayed that report, but warned Syria about even considering such weapons.
“If the Assad regime makes the tragic mistake of using chemical weapons . . . the regime will be held accountable,” said White House National Security Council rep Tommy Vietor.