BEIRUT – An explosion at a weapons depot in a rebel-held town in northwestSyria killed at least 39 civilians including a dozen children on Sunday, amonitor said.
An AFP correspondent at the site in Sarmada in Idlib province near theTurkish border said the explosion of unknown origin caused two buildings tocollapse.
Rescue workers used a bulldozer to remove rubble and extract trappedpeople, the correspondent said.
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor,said a previous toll of 12 civilians killed increased after more bodieswere retrieved from the rubble.
“The explosion occurred in a weapons depot in a residential building inSarmada,” said the head of the Britain-based monitor, which relies on anetwork of sources inside Syria.
But the cause of the blast was “not yet clear”, Abdel Rahman added.
He said most of those killed were family members of fighters from HayatTahrir al-Sham, an alliance led by jihadists from Syria´s former Al-Qaedaaffiliate, who had been displaced to the area from the central province ofHoms.
A rescue worker carried the motionless body of a small child from thewreckage to an ambulance, the AFP correspondent said.
Behind mounds of rubble, the facade of a building was scorched black, dueto a fire after the blast.
A civil defence source told AFP that women and children were among the dead.
But rescue workers had pulled out “five people who were still alive”, thesource said.
Most of Idlib is controlled by rebels and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, but theIslamic State group also has sleeper cells in the area.
The regime holds a small slither of southeastern Idlib.
In recent months, a series of explosions and assassinations — mainlytargeting rebel officials and fighters — have rocked the province.
While some attacks have been claimed by IS, most are the result ofinfighting since last year between other groups.
In recent days, regime forces have ramped up their deadly bombardment ofsouthern Idlib and sent reinforcements to nearby areas they control.
President Bashar al-Assad has warned that government forces intend toretake Idlib, after his Russia-backed regime regained control of swathes ofrebel-held territory elsewhere.
Around 2.5 million people live in the province, half of them displaced byfighting in other parts of the country.
More than 350,000 people have been killed and millions displaced sinceSyria´s civil war started in 2011 with the brutal repression ofanti-government protests. – APP/AFP