Gainfully Opportunistic 

"It would be magnitudes less than an equivalent Russian bomb [a more expensive explosive with a 90% reliability rate]. They could make these things all day and the cost is really small."
"I think of them like children. when I was a kid I played with firecrackers and we always wanted to make bigger explosions. [Like little kids], there's no logic in what they're doing. It appears random."
"It appears someone has stepped in and put much more quality control in these designs. That wasn't the case six months ago. Now everything is more consistent."
Richard Lloyd, ammunition expert, Tesla Laboratories, Arlington Virginia

The first versions of those deadly, unspeakably atrocious barrel bombs were basic. Those now being used by the Syrian regime to destroy its opponents in Aleppo and other rebel-occupied areas are a far cry from the rude and crude bombs originally used in August 2012 on Aleppo and then Homs and Al-Qusayr. According to Mr. Lloyd, technological tweaks have made the newer versions of those barrel bombs far more deadly, and marginally more accurate. As for the 'someone' who may have stepped in, how about the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps?

The size of the bombs has been increased from 90 kg to 135 kg, and finally to their present size of roughly 900 kilograms. The steel cylinders are filled with TNT, with shrapnel and fuel (oil or gas), and when they explode, though they are still low-tech and cheap and easy to produce, they have a deadly impact. The regime no longer drops them from military helicopters, the height made them too susceptible to being shot by rebel anti-aircraft missiles.

Flying now at a higher altitude the planes don't get hit by missiles, but it becomes more difficult to locate targets. Syrian military compensates by tossing more bombs at the same target. Over 700 people have died in government air raids in the past six weeks; about 15 civilians estimated to die with every incident involving an air-dropped bomb. A medium-sized bomb, about 980 kg, is capable of levelling buildings within 39 metres of the explosion; its effect felt up to 285 metres away.

On Tuesday, one of those improved, yet still crude barrel bombs was dropped directly on a mosque being used as a school. The mosque's crime, and that of the children within it, was that they were located in rebel-held territory. That barrel-bomb deposit was only one of seven around Aleppo yesterday. Part of the intensified campaign by the Syrian government to recapture parts of Aleppo, taken by rebels in 2012.

Now that the attention of the United States is elsewhere, say for example, the UN-mentored negotiations between government representatives and the main opposition, Syria has taken the opportunity to emulate its sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran, itself busy continuing its sanctioned nuclear program through uranium enrichment, while chuckling at the fiction of having arrived at a mutually agreeable six-month solution to the impasse between it and the Security Council.

It is the cunning way of brutal dictators and world-class bullies, extinguishing the life-blood of their citizens through religious extortion and physical atrocities to damp down any residual ardour for justice and mercy. Russian deputy foreign minister, special envoy to the Middle East, Mikhail Bogdanov, said in the strict confidence yesterday even while Bashar al-Assad was beating the living hell out of Syrian civilians and children that he placed his trust in the regime.

"We have no doubts that the government representatives will take place in a second round of talks between the Syrian sides in Geneva", Mr. Mogdanov said genially. "We hope that both sides will continue a patient, constructive discussion." The Syrian National Coalition may beg to differ, knowing full well the despair of Sunni Syrian civilians in a situation which has taken them in their millions away from the homes they once treasured, depositing them in squalid refugee camps.

ZEIN AL-RIFAI/AFP/Getty Images     A man carries a body following a reported Syrian government forces air strike in the northern city of Aleppo on February 4, 2014.

Footage posted on social media show men carrying lifeless bodies of children, covered in dust and blood. The area shown in the video footage is littered with rocks, concrete, and oh yes, bodies. One man can be seen in the video, clutching his head in anguish. The bodies of an adult and a child lie on the pavement.