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At least six people were killed and dozens of others injured in an explosion in northern Syria’s Idlib province, officials said on Thursday.
There has been no official statement on the cause of the blast.
The UK-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported that the explosion took place in an ammunition depot.
The Syrian Civil Defence volunteer organisation, also known as the White Helmets, confirmed at least six deaths from the blast, which took place in the town of Maarat Misrin north of the city of Idlib.
“This is the death toll only of those recovered by Syrian Civil Defence teams, who continue to search for those trapped under the rubble,” the White Helmets said in a statement.
Syrian Minister of Emergency and Disaster Management Raed al-Saleh said in a post on the social media platform X that teams were transporting the wounded and dead despite “continued recurring explosions in the area, which are hampering response efforts.”
The state-run news agency, SANA, reported 140 injured, citing local health officials, but gave no further details.
Syria is struggling to recover from a nearly 14-year civil war that ended with the ouster of former President Bashar al-Assad in a lightning rebel offensive in December.
During the war, which killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million, Idlib was an opposition-held enclave.
The country’s current interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa formerly led Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an insurgent group based in Idlib that spearheaded the offensive that unseated al-Assad.
Additional sources • AP
