(Reuters) - Twelve Syrian students were killed on Thursday when rebel mortar bombs landed on the canteen of Damascus University's College of Architecture, state-run media said.

Al-Ikhbariya television showed images of doctors pumping the chests of at least two young men and blood splattered on the floor of what appeared to be an outdoor canteen.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/28/us-syria-crisis-students-idUSBRE92R0E020130328

He was a grad student at UT Austin in the 1980s.

Nobody has heard from him or his American-born wife for more than a year now.

...eom.

While it is clear that the vast majority of war crimes and other gross violations continue to be committed by government forces, Amnesty International’s research points to an escalation in abuses by armed opposition groups, which have increasingly resorted to hostage taking and to the torture and summary killing of soldiers, pro-government militias and civilians.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/keep-international-pressure-against-abuses-syria-2013-03-26

The main rebel fighting group denied responsibility, asserting that it would never target a school filled with students, and suggested that Mr. Assad’s agents had carried out the attack to inflame passions against the two-year-old rebellion in Syria.

State media blamed the attack on what it called terrorists, the government’s generic term for armed rebels who have been fighting to topple Mr. Assad, calling it a “barbaric massacre.”

Loaey Mikdad, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, the main rebel fighting group, denied responsibility. “This is just inhumane and we would not do it,” Mr. Mikdad said in a telephone interview.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/world/middleeast/damascus-students-killed-in-mortar-strike.html?_r=0

They want to prevent youth from being educated so they kill students. They kill athletes in stadiums with their mortar fire even. It's not a tactic here and there, but a concerted strategy. In the capital, many people enjoy a normal life, going to work, going to school, seeing a movie, going shopping, and the insurgents wish to smash that completely, regardless of the Damascenes wishes. Indeed, they will seek to establish sharia courts to impose their nightmare vision.

That said, I don't doubt that the particular unit of the "FSA" interviewed had no awareness of the particular attack. It is probably their big brother, Nusra, which they would not dare to even criticize.

Nusra definitely uses terror as does the government which does it on a larger scale.

I would call Nusra the 'little brother' since they are numerically inferior to the FSA but they have more than enough fighter to cause too much terrorism.

I agree with you that the FSA probably did not know about this attack (obviously if it was done by the government, but even if Nusra did it). As you pointed the other day, the FSA and jihadists have engaged in gun battles with each other resulting in deaths so I doubt that either is afraid to criticize the other.

The rebels are especially hilarious when they accuse the regime of attacking itself. Which they do every fucking time.

If every time the government army was attacked, the opposition denied any responsibility that would be an interesting PR strategy in the middle of a civil war.

Like dropping mortars on the university.

Or setting off car bombs that kill dozens of innocents.

Or blowing up that mosque last week.

Or shooting chlorine rockets. (That was an attack on government forces, several Syrian soldiers died when that rocket hit their checkpoint, but the rebels tried to turn that into the Syrian government using chemical weapons.)

The rebels blamed the regime for each of those.

I am guessing its too much to hope for that they finish each other off.

We cluck and call Al Nusra terrorists, but they are our de facto allies. Along with those paragons of democracy, the emir of Qatar and the Saudi royals.