Syria airstrike on gas station kills at least 30, say opposition activists

Syrian opposition activists said a regime airstrike hit a gas station in the north of the country Thursday, setting off an explosion that killed at least 30 people and wounding dozens more.

The explosion went off in the town of Ain Issa, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the Turkish border, said Rami Abdul-Rahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Abdul-Rahman said witnesses told him they saw at least 30 bodies, but that the death toll was likely to rise. He said dozens of people were wounded.

Abdul-Rahman quoted one witness as saying the blast was caused by an airstrike, but that the Observatory could not independently confirm the cause of the explosion.

Another group of anti-regime activists, the Local Coordination Committees, reported intense attacks by warplanes on the gas station.

The group did not give a death toll, saying only that many people were killed or wounded. It said more than 70 wounded people were taken to a hospital in the provincial capital of Raqqa.