IN SYRIA a massive car bomb deliberately targeting people awaiting evacuation from Syrian towns being besieged by the so-called ‘rebel’ forces, in reality a mix of jihadist terrorists, blew 126 people to pieces on Saturday.
Amongst the dead were 70 children. The terrorist target was a number of buses carrying hundreds of people from two Shia-majority villages to the safety of Aleppo which is now largely under the control of the Syrian army.
This transfer was part of a deal between the government of president Assad and these US backed terrorist groups, under which rebel fighters and their families were permitted to evacuate to rebel controlled areas while people in towns under siege from terrorists forces would be evacuated to the safety of government controlled areas.
The buses carrying evacuees had been held up at a checkpoint by these rebel forces, and held on the outskirts of Aleppo without food or toilets and, according to one local resident who witnessed the scene, were ‘pressured’ to sit back on their buses, which were then callously blown to bits by a car bomb.
Although this atrocity was reported in the western press it was met with absolute silence from Trump, May and every other western leader, in stark contrast to their hysterical denunciations of Syria and Russia when 30 children were killed in an alleged chemical weapons attack.
Then, without a shred of evidence, this atrocity was placed firmly at the door of Assad and the Syrian forces with Trump claiming that he shed tears over the deaths of innocent children, claiming it was an ‘affront to humanity’ before adding ‘When you kill innocent babies, little babies… that crosses… many lines.’
In Britain the ever faithful Tory government joined in the clamour for war against Syria in response to this crime against humanity. The 59 Cruise missiles attack by the US against a Syrian air base, which killed nine civilians including four children, was clearly just the start.
On Saturday while the jihadist allies of imperialism were blowing up 70 children, Tory foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, and his French counterpart were urging the international community to ‘go further’ in punishing those responsible for the alleged chemical weapons attack saying it was a ‘moral duty’ to bring the perpetrator to justice, while making it quite clear that as far as they were concerned Assad was the perpetrator.
Of the 70 children murdered by their terrorist allies neither Johnson, May, Trump or the French government had a single word to say, not a word about lines being crossed or about bringing the perpetrators to justice.
The same monumental hypocrisy was seen in the condemnation of Syria over the defeat of these jihadist rebels in the city of Aleppo. When it became clear the Syrian army was re-taking the city and scoring a huge victory it suddenly became a ‘humanitarian disaster’ and condemnation was heaped on Russia and Syria.
But when it comes to an even bigger loss of civilian life in the siege of the Iraqi city of Mosul by Iraqi government forces, supported by US and UK airpower, there is once again a deafening silence.
When US and UK planes attacked the West of Mosul on March 17 killing 200 innocent civilians this was written off as ‘ISIS is smuggling civilians into buildings so we won’t see them and trying to bait the coalition to attack.’
The facts are clear; Assad was set-up by imperialism with a fabricated claim of a chemical weapons attack, which was then used to whip up a storm of moral outrage, behind which imperialism is organising a war to oust the legitimate government of Syria and destroy the country, as it has done in Libya and Iraq, in order to secure both countries’ oil wealth for imperialism.
The lives of babies and innocent children mean nothing to imperialism except in as far as they can be used as an excuse for even more wars and thousands more deaths. The working class of the US, Britain and Europe must give their full and unconditional support to the Syrian people and its right to choose its own government by organising to defeat imperialism at home through the victory of the socialist revolution. This is the only way to end the killing of innocent children by the imperialist powers.
