An explosion at a depot for unexploded ordnance on the outskirts of Idlib city in northwest Syria has killed at least four people, state media has reported, without identifying its cause.
News agency SANA, citing the Health Ministry, reported at least “four dead and five others injured” in the blast, which occurred on Thursday.
The Ministry for Emergency and Disaster Management said in a statement that the “large blast” occurred “in a depot for war remnants”.
War monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said that “successive large explosions” had ripped through “a base for non-Syrian fighters containing a weapons depot”.
United Kingdom-based monitoring group SOHR, which obtains its information from a network of local informants, gave a higher toll of six dead, including two civilians, and eight others injured, three of them civilians.
Raed al-Saleh, minister for Emergency and Disaster Management, said on X that the death toll included two children.
He stressed “the need to unite the efforts of ministries, institutions and local bodies to limit the risks of unexploded ordnance and war remnants”.
Images on social media showed a massive cloud of smoke rising above a building in a rural area.
Northwestern Idlib, long governed by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group that led the offensive that toppled Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad in December, was known as a bastion of rebel groups during the war, including foreign fighters.
Some groups of foreign fighters still have bases in the region.
Late last month, a series of explosions in Idlib province killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 100, SOHR said at the time.
Those blasts occurred at a weapons depot belonging to the Uighur group the Turkistan Islamic Party in Ma’arrat Misrin, the monitor reported.
Authorities did not immediately say what may have caused Thursday’s explosions.
