Dozens of people were killed in an air strike while queuing for bread in Syria's central Hama province today, activists said.
Such a toll, if confirmed, would make it one of the deadliest air strikes in Syria's civil war. Videos uploaded by activists showed dozens of blood-stained bodies in the street among piles of rubble and shrapnel.
"When I got there, I could see piles of bodies all over the ground. There were women and children," said Samer al-Hamawi, an activist in the town of Halfaya, where the strike hit a bakery. "There are also dozens of wounded."
Rami Abdelrahman, of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said: "It is still very unclear what the casualties are ... From looking at the videos I expect the death toll to be around or above 50, and not higher than 100. But for now I am keeping my estimate at dozens killed until we have more information."
Halfaya was seized by rebels last week in their 21-month-old revolt against president Bashar al-Assad.
Videos showed individuals engaged in efforts to dig out injured victims out from under debris and another showed a young boy who had his feet had been blown off in the blast.
Mr Hamawi said more than 1,000 people had been queuing at the bakery. Shortages of fuel and flour have made bread production erratic across the country, and people often wait for hours to buy loaves.
"We hadn't received flour in around three days so everyone was going to the bakery today, and lots of them were women and children," he said.
Another activist said residents picking through the bodies were still determining which were wounded and which were dead.
New York-based Human Rights Watch condemned army air strikes on bakeries earlier this year, arguing that in some incidents the Syrian military was not using enough precision to target rebel sites, and in other instances it may have intentionally hit civilians.
Mr Hamawi, who spoke via Skype, uploaded a video of the scene that showed dozens of dust-coated bodies lined up near a pile of rubble by a concrete building, its walls blackened.
Women and children were crying and screaming as some men rushed to the scene with motorbikes and vans to carry away the victims.
The authenticity of the videos could not be immediately verified. The government restricts media access in Syria.
In another video, the cameraman could be heard sobbing has he filmed the scene in front of him.
"God is great, God is great. It was a war plane, a war plane," he cried.
Reuters