54 die as Syria jet bombs petrol station

As many as 54 people were killed after a government warplane bombed a petrol station in northern Syria on Thursday in what would be the deadliest single air strike of the country's civil war.

Dozens of charred bodies were left strewn across the forecourt of the filling station in the village of Ain Issa near the Turkish border after a bomb dropped by a MiG-23 ignited more than 40,000 litres of fuel, opposition activists said.

Amateur video footage showed clouds of black smoke billowing above the mangled and burnt-out wrecks of several lorries near the scene. Scores of people were said to have been wounded, and some rebel fighters said the number of dead was as high as 70, including a woman and a child, although local human rights groups said the death toll stood at between 30 and 54.

Activists accused regime forces of deliberately attacking the petrol station when it was at its most crowded as part of a strategy of terrifying civilians into denying shelter to rebel fighters.

"The petrol station is the only one that is still open to customers in the area, and it was packed," an activist who identified himself as Abu Muawiya said. "The only reason why [the regime] would strike the petrol station with a jet is to kill the highest number of people possible."

A growing number of civilians in Syria's bloody civil war are being killed from the air, with government helicopters and fighter jets launching regular strikes at rebel positions that are often located in densely populated areas.

Amnesty International, the charity, this week accused President Bashar al-Assad's forces of making no distinction between civilians and combatants, saying it had documented air strikes against hospitals and bread queues.

Rebel fighters have struggled to counter the aerial threat, although they have succeeded in bringing down one helicopter and a fighter jet in recent weeks.

Yesterday they claimed to have shot down a second helicopter although Assad's information ministry said it had in fact crashed with a passenger jet.

The helicopter plummeted to the ground near Douma, an area on the southern outskirts of Damascus where heavy fighting had earlier been reported, after allegedly clipping the tail of the airliner. The unidentified aircraft was said to have landed safely at Damascus International Airport, with no injuries reported among the 200 passengers on board.