At least 14 people were killed and more than 10 others wounded in northwestern Syria on Wednesday when an explosion erupted at a temporary weapons storage facility, the Syrian Defense Ministry said.
All of those killed were Defense Ministry personnel, while several civilians were also wounded, according to a government statement. The ministry added that it was investigating the causes and circumstances of the explosion.
Subhi Assaf, head of the media office at the Idlib health directorate, warned that the death toll could rise as rescue workers continued to search the site.
The explosion occurred at a temporary storage facility north of Idlib city, where weapons and unexploded ordnance were being collected before being transferred elsewhere, according to an official at the Ministry of Defense, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
The blast comes as Syria’s new government, led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, grapples with the vast stockpiles of weapons and other remnants of war left behind after his forces ousted the dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
By Wednesday afternoon, teams from Syria’s Civil Defense rescue service had arrived to assess and secure the area, according to a post the group shared online. It said its workers continued to hear explosions in the area after they had arrived.
The blast was the second deadly episode involving munitions in the region in just over a week. Five people were killed on Sept. 1 when an ammunition-laden vehicle exploded in the city of Binnish in the Idlib countryside, Syria’s state news media reported. The circumstances of that explosion are unclear.
Years of civil war have left Syria littered with land mines, unexploded shells and abandoned weapons, many of which remain scattered across towns and former battlefields. The United Nations estimated last year that more than 15 million people were at risk from remnants of explosives from the Syrian civil war.
The cleanup is a daunting task, hampered by the scale of the contamination and a shortage of trained specialists. Weapons and ammunition left behind at unsecured sites pose another risk, with some capable of exploding years after the fighting has ended, threatening lives and complicating efforts to rebuild communities.
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