The death toll from a bomb blast on a crowded Syrian bus convoy outside Aleppo reached at least 112 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said on Sunday.
Syrian rescue workers the Civil Defence said that they had carted away at least 100 bodies from the site of Saturday’s blast, which hit buses carrying Shia residents as they waited to cross from rebel into government territory in an evacuation deal between warring sides.
The British-based Observatory said the number was expected to rise.
Those killed were mostly residents of the villages of al-Foua and Kefraya in Idlib province, but included rebel fighters guarding the convoy, the Observatory said.
A rebel fighter stands near buses carrying people that were evacuated from the villages of Kefraya and al-Foua. (Ammar Abdullah/Reuters)
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which pro-Damascus media said was carried out by a suicide car bomber.
The convoy was carrying at least 5,000 people, including civilians and several hundred pro-government fighters who were granted safe passage out of the two Shia villages that are besieged by rebels.
Under the evacuation deal, more than 2,000 people, including rebel fighters, were granted safe passage out of Madaya, a town near Damascus besieged by government forces and their allies.
That convoy was waiting at a bus garage in a government-held area on Aleppo’s outskirts, a few kilometres from where the attack took place. Madaya evacuees said they heard the blast.