Video: Rebel ‘eats heart’ of Syria soldier

A gruesome video has emerged on the Internet apparently showing a Syrian rebel fighter cutting out the heart of a regime soldier and eating it.

“We swear to God we will eat your hearts and livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog,” the insurgent says as he bends over a blurred body and cuts out the heart in the amateur footage uploaded to YouTube.

“We are the heroes of Baba Amr,” he says, referring to a rebel stronghold of the central city of Homs that has been flattened by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.The man, identified in the video as a member of the mainstream rebel Free Syrian Army, then stands up, raises his dagger in one hand and the heart in the other.

He then proceeds to place the organ in his mouth, before the video abruptly ends.The authenticity of the footage, which was uploaded to YouTube on Sunday by a user named “SyrianGirl War”, cannot be verified.It can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9IRn5b0aik.

The Syria conflict flared when forces loyal to Assad launched a brutal crackdown on Arab Spring-inspired democracy protests that erupted in March 2011.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based watchdog, says more than 80,000 people have since been killed, with numerous incidents of mass killings and other atrocities.

Syria: Damascus rocked by suicide bomb

A suicide car bomb has exploded in the main business district of Damascus, killing at least 15 people, setting cars ablaze and damaging buildings, according to state television.

A Damascus resident described the blast as the biggest she had heard in the capital during the two-year-old revolt against Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad. She said large plumes of black smoke were rising from the Sabaa Bahrat district.

State television said the explosion occurred near a school in Sabaa Bahrat, a heavily populated area that also houses the central bank and the finance ministry. It said 53 people were wounded.

It showed footage of seven bodies in the street, including at least two charred corpses in the wreckage of an overturned bus. The fire brigade was dousing flames from cars crushed by the blast. Other vehicles were still on fire in what appeared to be a car park.Men carried away a woman on a stretcher, her face covered in blood. Panic-stricken women in long black dresses and headscarves ran towards the scene. State television showed some bandaged children in school uniform.