SYRIA began three days’ national mourning today as the scale of a terrorist attack on an army graduation ceremony became clear.

Thursday’s drone attack on the Homs Military Academy killed 89 people, including 31 women and five children, and wounded 277, the Health Ministry confirmed. More deaths are anticipated as some of the wounded are in critical condition.

Hundreds of people, many of them dressed in black and weeping, gathered outside the Abdul-Qader Shaqfa Military Hospital where the bodies of 30 victims in coffins draped with Syrian flags were put in ambulances to be taken to their home towns for burial.