UPDATE, OCT 6:

The Assad regime’s Health Minister Hasan Ghabbagh says the confirmed death toll from Thursday’s drone strikes on the Homs Military Academy is 80, including six women and six children.

Ghabbagh told State TV that almost 240 people are injured.

ORIGINAL ENTRY, OCT 5: More than 100 people have reportedly been killed in a drone attack on a military academy in Homs in western Syria, minutes after the Assad regime’s Defense Minister Ali Mahmoud Abbas left a graduation ceremony.

The regime’s Defense Ministry said military personnel and civilians were among the victims of the assault by “terrorist” groups.

It gave no further detail about the attackers. No group claimed responsibility.

The Defense and Foreign Ministries said the regime would respond “with full force”, as it carried out bombing of opposition territory in Idlib Province in northwest Syria.

Abbas was named Defense Minister in April 2022.

A man who helped set up decorations at the academy said, “After the ceremony, people went down to the courtyard and the explosives hit. We don’t know where it came from, and corpses littered the ground.”

Footage on social media showed people, some in military fatigues and somes in civilian clothes, lying in pools of blood in the courtyard. Some of the bodies were smoldering and others were on fire.