Damascus, Nov 12 (IANS): Funerals were held Tuesday for four schoolchildren, who lost their lives a day earlier when a rebel mortar shell struck their minibus in a Christian-dominated district of Syria's capital Damascus.

At the Mujtahed Hospital in Damascus, grieving families of the slain children oversaw the burial preparations of their kids, putting them in coffins and driving their cascades to churches in their neighbourhoods for final prayers, Xinhua reported.

The four kids were killed in their minibus in Bab Sharqi area along with their driver, whose mother urged President Bashar al-Assad during the funeral ceremony to "rid us of the criminals", referring to the rebels in nearby areas who have focused their attacks over the past few months on many districts, mainly in south and east of Damascus.

Damascenes have become fed up with the indiscriminate shelling by the rebels, who claim that they target security and military positions, but their mortars always land at residential areas.

A group of young Syrians have opened a Facebook page, named "the Diary of a Mortar Shell," in which they list the number of mortars that daily strike Damascus.

The page, with more than 50,000 followers, said that two people were killed Tuesday when a mortar shell struck the al-Mazra'a district in Damascus.

The mortars "diary" documents an average of 10 mortars on a daily basis.

The rebels, on their side, claim that shelling Damascus comes as a response to the tight siege their areas have been subjected to by the government troops.

Syria's state-run SANA news agency said that 16 people were injured Tuesday in Damascus by mortar shells.