Explosion at Syrian weapons depot claims at least 69 lives
No organisation has yet taken responsibility for the blast which killed 52 civilians, including 17 children, and 17 members of jihadist-led alliance Hayat Tahrir al-Sham
Beirut — The death toll of an explosion at a weapons depot in northwestern Syria has risen to 69, mostly civilians including 17 children, a monitor said on Monday as search operations continued. Sunday’s blast of unknown origin in the town of Sarmada in Idlib province took the lives of 52 civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The explosion also killed 17 members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadist-led alliance, according to the Britain-based monitor, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria. "Rescue operations are still ongoing," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP, more than 24 hours after the blast at the depot inside a residential building. Most of the civilians killed were family members of HTS fighters displaced to the area from the central province of Homs, he said. HTS controls more than half of Idlib province and is led by jihadists from Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate.
Most of the rest is held by rebels, while the regime als...
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