Four of the abducted
Lebanese pilgrims who were kidnapped in Syria in May have been killed in an
airstrike on the Aazaz region in Aleppo, reported al-Jadeed television on
Thursday.
It said that the
building where the pilgrims were being held was damaged during a MiG-29 fighter
jet strike.
The remaining seven
pilgrims were also wounded in the strike, reported LBCI television.
They have since been
taken to hospital on the Turkish side of the border with Syria.
One of the kidnappers,
Abu Ibrahim was also critically wounded in the attack, said al-Jadeed.
Mohammed Nour, a member
of Abu Ibrahim's media office, told LBCI that the kidnapper was only slightly
injured in the attack.
He later told LBCI that
"seven of the 11 Lebanese abductees are in good health and four of them
are unaccounted for."
Meanwhile, the head of
al-Meqdad family association told LBCI that "the 11 Lebanese pilgrims and
their kidnapper Abu Ibrahim have been killed in the Aazaz airstrike."
OTV later reported that
Prime Minister Najib Miqati and Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour decided to hold
talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to discuss the case of the
11 pilgrims and the abducted Turkish national in Lebanon.
The officials are
currently in Saudi Arabia to attend the Organization of Islamic Cooperation
summit.
The Britain-based Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights said "more than 20 people were killed in an
airstrike in Aazaz town" near the main northern city of Aleppo.
Witnesses told Agence
France Presse at the scene that least five bodies had been pulled from the
rubble of about 10 houses flattened in the attack on the town of Aazaz, while
many more were still trapped.
Aazaz lies just to the
north of Syria's second city of Aleppo near the border with Turkey and is often
used as rear base by Free Syrian Army fighters.
"This was a
civilian area. All these houses were packed with women and children sleeping
during the fast," said witness Abu Omar, a civil engineer in his 50s.
"Only dogs can do
something like this. Israel wouldn't do such a thing in a war," he told
AFP.
The Britain-based
Observatory said that the strike was by a MiG fighter jet and targeted a former
Baath Party headquarters which had been taken over by rebel groups.
"The whole of the
area was flattened," the Observatory’s chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.
"Those killed included civilians and fighters, but what is clear is that
there was a Free Syrian Army base there."
Abdel Rahman said that
among those wounded were four of the 11 pilgrims.
An AFP correspondent
said dozens of people, many wailing and shouting, were climbing over the
rubble, trying to pull out victims.
Meanwhile, the families
of the 11 pilgrims called on everyone not to head to the airport road and held
the Lebanese state responsible for what happened, reported LBCI.
They also voiced their
rejection of the presence in Lebanon of the ambassadors of Turkey, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia and Syria, saying none of them had acted to resolve their case.
The pilgrims were
kidnapped in May as they were returning by land from a pilgrimage in Iran.
They were abducted in the
Aleppo region in Syria.http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/50173
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