Beirut: Forty people, including a child, were killed on Friday when rockets fired by Syrian government forces crashed into a market in a rebel-held area outside Damascus, a monitor said.
The deaths came as top diplomats from 17 countries, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, met for the first time in Vienna to seek a political path out of the conflict.
"There were 40 people killed and at least 100 wounded in the centre of Douma," a town on the eastern edges of the Syrian capital, Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.
He added that one child was among the dead. "There is still heavy fire now, with both rockets and mortars," he said, adding that the toll was expected to rise as people were still being pulled out of damaged buildings.
Rebel-held Douma lies in Eastern Ghouta, the largest opposition stronghold in Damascus province.
Government air strikes on Thursday also hit a Douma market and a hospital, killing at least nine people, the Observatory said. An AFP photographer at the scene said on Thursday's attack had wounded hospital staff, limiting the treatment available for the wounded on Friday. He said the latest attack took place as residents gathered at the market, leaving corpses piled on top of each other.
In the chaotic aftermath, a man in his thirties cried over the body of a young boy killed in the attack. "Since your father was killed in the last massacre, your mother has been telling you to stop working in the market. Why did you go? Why?" he cried.
A regular target
The market's corrugated metal rooftops had been twisted and blown apart in the attack, left dangling over mangled bicycles and shredded signs.
The Douma Coordination Committee, a local activist group, published a gruesome video of what it said was the aftermath of more than a dozen rockets smashing into the market.
Blood-soaked bodies lay crumpled underneath tables of food and other goods, as men gathered around wounded people. A young boy in a sky-blue sweater stood on the sidelines, looking stunned.
According to Abdel Rahman, "Douma is one of the areas in Syria where there are the highest number of deaths since the beginning of the war." Government forces regularly target the region with rocket fire, shelling and aerial raids, while opposition groups there also launch rockets into the capital.
In August, 117 people were killed in a single day of air strikes in the town, causing a global outcry. Throughout Syria's brutal war, both the government and opposition forces have been condemned by rights groups for indiscriminate fire on civilian areas.
More than 250,000 people have been killed since the conflict began in March 2011.
