Graphic pics: Car bomb kills over a 100 Syrians during evacuation

A car bomb in northern Syria killed more than 100 people Saturday when it ripped through buses evacuating residents from a town besieged by rebels for more than two years. Syrian state television showed bodies strewn across the ground, the charred vehicles still packed with their passengers' possessions. By late afternoon, the road was lined with body bags. The attack served as a bloody reminder of the human stakes for regional powers as they broker a complex population swap, moving some 30,000 Syrians between government- and rebel-held territory.

The buses had left the northern town of Fouaa on Friday as part of a long-awaited first phase of that agreement. Those on board had spent years under siege by extremist rebels, living in fear and without access to regular food or medicine. Eyewitnesses to the attack said the air filled with screams as passengers, some of them on fire, staggered out of the cloud of dust. A man who gave his name as Ali described watching a frail old woman stumble and fall. "We reached her too late, her leg had snapped and there was nothing we could do. What did she do to deserve this? She was just someone's mother."

The White Helmets rescue group said its volunteers had recovered more than 100 bodies from the wreckage, and that another 55 people had been injured. The death toll was expected to rise.