Updated at 7.30pm
AN AIRSTRIKE HAS hit a crowded refugee camp in Syria close to the border with Turkey, killing at least 28 people, according to Syrian pro-opposition activists.
Images posted on social media said to be of the aftermath of the strike showed at least a dozen tents burned to the ground and bloodied women and children being loaded onto a pickup truck.
The camp in Sarmada, in rebel-held territory in the northwestern Idlib province, is home to between 1,500 and 2,000 internally displaced people who fled the fighting from the surrounding Aleppo and Hama provinces over the past year, according to a local activist.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 28 died while the Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said more than 30 were killed.
Footage on social media showed charred bodies and men pouring buckets of water on fires that erupted within the camp.
The attack came just hours after a twin bombing in the central province of Homs killed at least 10 people and wounded scores, state media and the regional governor, Talal Barrazi, said.
A car bomb first exploded in the main square of the village of Mukharam al-Fawkani, located about 45km east of the central city of Homs, Syria’s third largest.
As people gathered to help the victims, a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle detonated his explosives belt nearby.
Four children and three women were among those killed, Syrian state TV said, and as many as 49 were wounded in the attack.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the Islamic State group has claimed to be behind several similar deadly attacks in Homs province.
The area of the blasts is close to where Syrian troops and IS gunmen have been fighting for control of the vital Shaer gas field, which fell to the Islamic State yesterday after the extremists overran 13 government checkpoints and captured a Syrian soldier.
The Observatory said 34 government troops and 16 militants have been killed in three days of fighting there.
Aleppo
Meanwhile, relative calm prevailed in the northern city of Aleppo, which has been the centre of violence in recent weeks following a truce announced yesterday by US officials in agreement with Russia, in an effort to extend Syria’s fragile cease-fire to the deeply contested city.
The Syrian military said the truce would last only 48 hours.
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