Rescuers: Airstrikes near Aleppo kill 26, mostly children


Rescue workers in the rebel-held Idlib province in Syria say at least 26 people, mostly schoolchildren, were killed Wednesday in airstrikes conducted by either Syrian or Russian warplanes.
The Syrian Civil Defense group said on Facebook the attack was on a residential area and school in the village of Haas, near Aleppo, with 20 children among the dead. The monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said several locations were hit in Haas, including an elementary school and a middle school, killing one teacher and 15 children.
On Syrian state television, a military source was quoted as saying several militants were killed in the airstrikes, but did not mention children. In a statement, Anthony Lake, the head of UNICEF, said if the attack was deliberate, "it is a war crime."
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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