Airstrike kills 16 in northeast Syria village

An air strike killed at least 16 people in a majority Kurdish village in the northeastern Syrian province of Hasakeh on Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog said. "Sixteen people were martyred after a warplane targeted the village of Haddad, which is majority Kurdish... including at least three children and two women," the Britain-based group reported. Video footage uploaded by activists on YouTube showed the aftermath of an initial attack, with women and children screaming as they rushed out of a badly damaged house. As men arrived to help carry the injured, the sound of another explosion can be heard and dust rises up around the building. Several women carrying children emerge from one home, outside which at least two bodies can be seen, at least one apparently that of a child, a pool of blood next to his head. In northern Syria, the Kurdish population has largely observed a careful compromise with regime and rebel forces, fighting alongside neither, in return for security and semi-autonomy over majority Kurdish areas. But there have been reports in recent weeks of Kurdish fighters joining the battle with Syrian rebels in certain areas, including the Kurdish Sheikh Maqsud district of Aleppo. Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP that a group of rebels used an area near the site of Sunday's attack as a gathering place, but that the raid had targeted a group of houses belonging to villagers some distance away.