Summary No one has claimed responsibility for the gruesome massacre.
ALEPPO: Umm Mohammed walks slowly among the 32 shrouded corpses lying on the floor of a school in Syria s Aleppo city, some of scores shot at point-blank range who were being buried on Wednesday.
She stops and kneels down to draw aside the sheet covering a face too damaged to recognise. One of the fighters pulls the sheet further away to reveal a tattoo on the dead man s right arm.
Umm Mohammed covers her face with her hands and begins to weep. "It s her nephew, a doctor from the city of Maara who disappeared in July," says her husband, Abu Ahmed, who was on the banks of Aleppo s Quweiq River on Tuesday.
There he had helped to drag from water the bodies of what some say may have been as many as 108 murdered young men, and even children.
"When we got him on shore, I was sure it was him. The worst thing will be to tell his mother about it; she had been holding out hope that he was still alive," says Abu Ahmed.
No one has claimed responsibility for the gruesome massacre. Rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad blame his regime, and it in turn points the finger at the Islamist Al-Nusra Front.
But at this school, in a rebel-held zone of Syria s once-thriving commercial capital, there is no doubt that Assad was behind the massacre.
"We will avenge what happened yesterday. The deaths of these innocents will not go unpunished," rebel commander Abdel Khader al-Sada tells AFP.
"All the civilians who live in liberated zones are enemies of the regime. All Syrians are enemies of the regime. Assad is prepared to finish off his people to stay in power."
Hundreds of youth have gathered outside the Yarmuk School as preparations got underway to bury the victims. They chant "we will not forget the blood of our martyrs."
Just after midday, an imam raises the palms of his hands to his face and begins to pray over the bodies, amid the hush of the kneeling crowd.
