Children among 39 civilians killed in Syria arms depot blast — report

An explosion at a weapons depot in a rebel-held town in northwest Syria killed at least 39 civilians including a dozen children, a monitor says.

An AFP correspondent at the site in Sarmada in Idlib province near the Turkish border says the explosion of unknown origin caused two buildings to collapse.

Rescue workers used a bulldozer to remove rubble and extract trapped people, the correspondent says.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria, says a previous toll of 12 civilians killed increased after more bodies were retrieved from the rubble.

The cause of the blast is “not yet clear,” Abdel Rahman says.

He says most of those killed were family members of fighters from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an alliance led by jihadists from Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate, who had been displaced to the area from the central province of Homs.

— AFP