Secondary blasts echo through Tartus area as Syrians clean up from alleged Israeli strikes

Residents of Syria’s coastal Tartus region say alleged Israeli airstrikes overnight, called the heaviest in the area in over a decade, went on until almost 6 a.m., shaking the ground and causing widespread damage.

“It was like an earthquake. All the windows in my house were blown out,” says 28-year-old Ibrahim Ahmed, an employee in a legal office.

According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of sources inside the country, 18 raids “targeted strategic locations on the Syrian coast,” including missile stockpiles and air defense assets.

In the village of Bmalkah in the hills above Tartus, roads are filled with shattered glass and shreds of roller doors and smoke can still be seen rising from nearby hillsides.

Clean-up crews trying to clear debris off roads have been sweeping up missile and shell parts, even as the valley echoes with fresh blasts from stockpiled munitions catching fire.

“The village did not sleep last night. The kids were crying,” says one middle-aged man in a blue sweatshirt who refused to give his name.

At a nearby military complex, smoke billows from arched concrete bunkers cut into the hillside, and secondary explosions launch shrapnel that then falls among the trees.

Broken parts of mortars, rockets and missile launch tubes litter the hillsides.