Death toll of Syria’s weapon warehouse explosion raises to 69: Monitor

The death toll of a blast at an arms depot in northwestern Syria has risen to 69, with the victims being mostly civilians, including 17 children, a Syrian monitoring group reported on Sunday.

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The death toll of a blast at an arms depot in northwestern Syria has risen to 69, with the victims being mostly civilians, including 17 children, a Syrian monitoring group reported on Sunday.

Sunday’s explosion in the town of Sarmada in Idlib Province killed 52 civilians, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.

The blast also killed 17 militants of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadist-led alliance, according to the monitoring group.

“Rescue operations are still ongoing,” the head of SOHR, Rami Abdelrahman, told AFP more than 24 hours after the weapons depot blast, which occurred inside a residential building.

Most of the civilians who were killed in the explosion were family members of HTS fighters displaced to the region from the central province of Homs, he added.

The jihadist rebel group controls more than half of Idlib Province and is led by members of Syria’s former al-Qaeda affiliate.

While competing rebel factions hold the rest of the province, Syrian government forces also control a small area in Idlib’s southeast.

Over the past few months, a series of blasts and assassinations have struck the province.

Although the Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility for some of the attacks, most are the result of infighting between the rebel groups.

The Syrian military has increased its bombardment in southern Idlib and deployed forces to nearby territories.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has warned that his allied forces plan to retake control of Idlib after his troops regained control of large swaths of territory in other parts of the country from jihadists and rebels.

Idlib Province was home to almost 2.5 million people, but half have been displaced due to the ongoing conflict.

Since the start of the Syrian civil war, over 350,000 people have been killed, and millions have been displaced within the country or have fled.

Editing by Nadia Riva