WORLD
At least 100 killed as Syrian military college hit in drone attack

Baku, October 6, AZERTAC
A drone attack on a military college in Syria’s Homs province during a graduation ceremony has killed at least 100 people and wounded 240 more, a war monitor and the Syrian health minister have said, according to Al Jazeera.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 100 people were killed and 125 injured. An official in the alliance backing Syria’s government said the toll was about 100.
Health Minister Hassan Al-Ghabash gave a lower figure, telling state television 80 people had been killed, including six children, but that about 240 people had been injured. There were concerns the death toll could rise further as many of the wounded were in serious condition.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
Syria’s military earlier said drones laden with explosives targeted the ceremony on Thursday as it came to an end. In a statement, the military accused fighters “backed by known international forces” for the attack.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “expressed deep concern” at the drone attack in Homs as well as “reports of retaliatory shelling” in northwest Syria, his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.
Syria’s defence minister attended the graduation ceremony but left minutes before the attack, the Reuters news agency reported, citing a Syrian security source and a source in the regional alliance backing the Damascus government against opposition groups.
“After the ceremony, people went down to the courtyard and the explosives hit. We don’t know where it came from, and corpses littered the ground,” said a Syrian man who had helped set up decorations at the ceremony.
Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, who has reported extensively on Syria, said that that attack represents “a major security breach, a blow to the Syrian regime”.