Pro-regime gunmen kill Syrian teen on bus from Douma — monitor

AL BAB, Syria — Pro-regime forces in Syria opened fire on buses carrying rebels and civilians from Eastern Ghouta, killing a 14-year-old boy, a monitor said on Sunday. 

Several other passengers were also wounded by the attack on Saturday on the convoy that left the town of Douma under a Russia-brokered evacuation deal, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Passengers on the convoy told AFP after arriving in the northern province of Aleppo that gunfire had killed one person and wounded three others, all from the same family, but gave no details on the victim. 

The attack on the buses came shortly after the United States, France and Britain struck regime sites in Syria in response to an alleged deadly regime chemical attack on the town of Douma on April 7. 

Rescuers and medics have said the alleged attack killed more than 40 people, but Damascus and Moscow have dismissed the reports as "fabrications".

Douma was the final rebel holdout in an almost two-month regime assault to reconquer the last opposition bastion outside Damascus. 

After the alleged toxic weapon attack, rebels agreed to evacuate.

On Saturday, the Syrian army said the regime had retaken all of Eastern Ghouta after the last rebels left Douma.

Their victory came after a blistering air and ground battle that killed more than 1,700 civilians and saw thousands bussed out of the former rebel enclave under Russia-brokered evacuation deals.

These convoys have travelled through regime territory to reach northern areas under opposition control, with previous reported incidents of stone throwing or even gunfire in the direction of the buses.

On April 1, gunfire wounded six people on a convoy of buses ferrying opposition fighters and civilians from Eastern Ghouta towards the northwestern province of Idlib, the observatory said.

More than 350,000 people have been killed in Syria's war since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.