2nd explosion in 3 days against rebels in Daraa Province — but who carried out the attacks?

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A training camp of the rebel faction Jaish al-Islam was struck by a suicide bomber on Friday night in southern Syria, causing dozens of casualties.

THe bomber attacked a meeting of Jaish al-Islam members in Naseeb in eastern Daraa Province, killing at least 23 people and injuring about 30.

The explosion was the second in three days against rebels. On Wednesday, a blast inside an operations room, in a manufacturing plant near Daraa city, killed at least four people.

A de-escalation zone, proclaimed by the US and Russia last month, covers southwestern Syria including parts of Daraa Province. Battles between pro-Assad forces and rebels have ebbed in Daraa city, which has been divided beteween the two sides for the years.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blasts. The Islamic State has largely been ejected from the area, but still carries out attacks. The jihadist bloc Hayat Tahrir al-Sham could also be a suspect — Jaish al-Islam and the Failaq al-Rahman faction have easded their differences near Damascus and are trying to push out HTS, led by Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, the group which pledged allegiance to Al Qa’eda until July 2016.

Footage of aftermath of Friday’s bombing, with graphic images of bodies:

YouTube, Suspending Accounts Documenting Syria, Deletes 100s of Videos Collected by Bellingcat Founder Higgins

YouTube has deleted hundreds of videos, collected by geolocation specialist Eliot Higgins, of attacks and atrocities in the Syrian conflict.

The account of Higgins, the founder of the specialist site Bellingcat, has been one of many suspended by YouTube. Earlier this week Google, the parent company of YouTube, said it had introduced artificial intelligence which could detect “extremist” videos without any human intervention; however, the software appears to have swept up videos collected by Bellingcat, AirWars, Middle East Eye, and other monitors and journalists.

Higgins responded on Saturday with a swipe at the Google AI and a note on the damaging loss of documentary material:

Higgins, who said he has met with Google over the last few years to discuss effective steps against “extremism” in social media, noted, “Ironically, by deleting years-old opposition channels YouTube is doing more damage to Syrian history than ISIS could ever hope to achieve. YouTube’s new anti ISIS AI has also shut down multiple channels with years of videos from Syria, irreplaceable documentation of the conflict.”

7 White Helmets Volunteers Killed by Gang in Idlib Province

A gang has attacked a White Helmets civil defense center in northwest Syria, killing seven volunteers and stealing money and equipment.

The assault was on the center in Sarmin in Idlib Province. The victims were shot in the head, according to journalist Hadi al-Abdallah:

One of the victims is reportedly a volunteer who carried out a dramatic rescue of a baby amid the pro-Assad assault on eastern Aleppo city in September 2016, and was then filmed crying, “I felt like she was my daughter”:

Almost 200 White Helmets personnel have been killed, the large majority by Assad regime and Russian airstrikes, since the organization was formed in 2013.

Volunteers rush for rescue operations after a regime airstrike on Douma, northeast of Damascus, on Saturday: