DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — At least six people were killed and dozens injured in an explosion in northern Syria’s Idlib province, officials said Thursday.
There was no official statement on the cause of the blast. The U.K.-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the explosion took place in an ammunition depot.
The Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, reported that at least six people were killed in the blast, which took place in the town of Maarat Misrin north of the city of Idlib on Thursday.
“This is the death toll only of those recovered by Syrian Civil Defense 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 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 in addition to the six killed, citing health officials, without giving further details.
Syria is struggling to recover from a nearly 14-year civil war that ended with the ouster of former President Bashar Assad in a lightning rebel offensive. During the war, which killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 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 Assad.
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