Explosion in northern Syria kills at least 6 people and injures dozens
DAMASCUS, Syria — 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 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 four people killed and 116 injured, 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.
The Associated Press
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBC
9 hours ago
- CBC
Southern Syria exploded into the worst violence of post-Assad era. What that means for the region's future
Social Sharing Seven months of relative calm in Syria came to a bloody end last week, when what began as local skirmishes escalated into the worst fighting since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December. The fighting took place in Suwayda, a southern Syrian province that has remained outside of government control since forces led by now-President Ahmed al-Sharaa swept into Damascus and took control of the country last year. Suwayda is dominated by the Druze sect, an Abrahamic group whose beliefs include aspects of Christianity, Islam and other religions. It also hosts a sizable population of Bedouins, a Sunni Arab ethnic group who live a semi-nomadic lifestyle as shepherds. Clashes between the two groups have been frequent, but none have escalated to anything near the degree reached last week, which began after a Druze merchant was kidnapped on July 11. By the time a shaky truce was established more than a week later, both Syrian and Israeli government forces were involved, 150,000 people were displaced and the region was left destabilized — primed for further violence. The initial incident led to two days of escalating fighting between Druze and Bedouin militiamen. On July 14, the Syrian government deployed forces into the province to intervene — until then entirely absent from Suwayda. Some government troops were ambushed and killed by Druze fighters affiliated with Hikmet al-Hijri, a controversial Druze spiritual leader who wields significant influence in the region. The unsettled status of the region and Damascus's desire to reassert control over the province contributed to the escalation, according to Charles Lister, director of the Syria program at the Middle East Institute, a non-profit think-tank in Washington, D.C. "There was a kind of tit-for-tat escalation spiral of kidnappings and reprisals, which is very difficult to control unless there's an intensive, localized negotiation process," Lister said. "I think there's an extent to which Damascus allowed events to play out for two or three days this time, in order to make the case, from its perspective, that this chaos is only going to continue so long as [Suwayda] remains outside of government control." Violence against the Druze As large-scale fighting erupted between Druze and Syrian government forces, Damascus's troops then advanced into Suwayda city itself. What happened there showcased the vast gulf that exists among the loosely organized militias that now constitute Syria's new army. Some are more professional fighters, trained under Sharaa for years and reliable enough to obey orders not to harm civilians. Other elements are far more sectarian and extremist — and with a recent history of massacring minorities, as happened against the Alawite sect on the Syrian coast in March. "We were at home when the first [government] fighters arrived," said a Druze resident of Suwayda in her 20s. "At first, they only asked if we had any weapons — there was no problem with them." CBC News is not naming the woman, as she fears reprisal for speaking publicly. "Soon after, we got a call from one of our elderly relatives, people in their 80s," she said. "Other fighters had come to their house and told them that they had better leave if they wanted to live. They were still lucky. We soon learned that some of our other relatives had been executed, right in their homes." Reports of atrocities against the Druze population of Suwayda flooded social media. One of the worst acts reportedly occurred in the city's main hospital, visited by the BBC in the days following the fighting. Doctors there said Syrian government fighters had killed "scores of patients, from the very young to the very old." Israeli involvement It was at this point that a new actor entered the fray: Israel, which had repeatedly warned the Syrian government that it would intervene forcefully if it moved its forces into the south of the country. The two sides met on July 12, though Lister says there may have been a misunderstanding about whether Syria had the green light to assert control in Suwayda. On July 15, Israel carried out airstrikes on Syrian government forces in Suwayda and elsewhere in southern Syria, hitting tanks and killing dozens of soldiers. Tel Aviv upped the ante a day later, striking the Syrian Defence Ministry building in downtown Damascus in broad daylight — a clear warning to Sharaa and the Syrian leadership. "Israel wanted to challenge the new state's authority and maintain its own ability to exert influence over Syria by sustaining the chaos in the south, allowing them to keep leverage over Damascus," Lister said. Israel is also home to a large and politically significant Druze minority, whose calls on the government to intervene in favour of their compatriots in Syria added domestic rationale to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's calculations, Lister added. In the wake of the airstrikes, the Syrian government caved to Israeli and Druze demands, withdrawing its forces from Suwayda late on July 16. As they withdrew, Druze militias surged forward, taking their revenge on their initial opponents in the conflict: the Bedouin. WATCH | New government has failed to contain atrocities in southern Syria, research fellow says: New government has failed to contain atrocities in southern Syria, research fellow says 8 days ago Deadly clashes in Syria's southern province of Suwayda show the new regime is incapable of protecting all Syrians, including its minorities, says Samy Akil, a non-resident fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. Dozens have died after Syrian government officials tried to intervene following attacks between local Bedouin fighters and militias linked to the Druze minority over the last week, prompting Israeli airstrikes on Damascus Wednesday. Druze retaliation and ceasefire Jamel Abo Sakhr, a local Bedouin man, told CBC News that Druze militias had burned houses and killed civilians. "They shelled us for days, trapping us in our villages, but it got worse after the [Syrian] army left," Abo Sakhr said. "The Druze militia of Hikmet al-Hijri was the most savage. His men came through our villages on a rampage, looting, burning houses, killing whoever they wanted." Abo Sakhr himself is now one of nearly 150,000 people displaced from Suwayda as a result of the recent fighting, according to figures from the UN humanitarian agency OCHA. Not all of his family managed to escape, he said. "Two of my cousins, Mahdi and Omran, were grazing their sheep," Abo Sakhr said. "They were not armed. Hijri's men shot them dead anyway, and then took their livestock. May God curse them." The Druze retaliation nearly caused the situation to spiral fully out of control, as Bedouin tribal fighters numbering 50,000 or more mobilized across Syria and headed to Suwayda to support their brethren. A ceasefire brokered on July 20 finally took hold last weekend, ending clashes with the withdrawal of both Bedouin and government forces from Suwayda. Implications for the region As the dust settles on the latest round of fighting, the scale of the sectarian killings on each side and Israel's role have given the incident implications for the future of Syria itself. "Israel's intervention unquestionably created this kind of zero-sum mentality on all sides," said Lister. The air campaign, and the ensuing mobilizations, led both the Druze and Bedouin to see the fighting in "existential" terms, Lister added. Among the Druze, one figure has emerged from the carnage above all others: Hikmat al-Hijri, the Israel-backed sheikh who has been the most hardline opponent of any reintegration of Suwayda into the central Syrian state. "Hijri is not just a national hero [for the Druze], he is practically a god here now," said the Druze woman who spoke to the CBC, referencing the sheikh's popular perception in Suwayda. "No one can question him now." For her and other Druze, it will be very hard to accept anything Damascus offers after what they have experienced. "We all had hopes for this government," the woman said. "We thought that what happened on the coast, the killings of Alawites, was just because Assad was an Alawite," she said, referencing the incidents in March where gunmen loyal to the new government carried out revenge killings against Assad's minority Alawite sect. "But now, after they have come here and massacred us, we see we are not safe from them, either." With Israeli airpower in the equation, it seems clear Suwayda will remain outside of government control for the foreseeable future. "Suwayda is likely to remain in this kind of semi-independent status for some time," Lister said. "But the current situation is unsustainable. Without long negotiations to figure out an acceptable solution, this will only lead to another uptick in fighting at some point."
CTV News
12 hours ago
- CTV News
French court to decide if Assad can be stripped of immunity and tried for Syrian chemical attacks
BRUSSELS — France's highest court is ruling Friday on whether it can strip the head of state immunity of Bashar Assad, the former leader of Syria now in exile in Russia, because of the brutality of the evidence in accusations against him collected by Syrian activists and European prosecutors. If the judges at the Cour de Cassation lift Assad's immunity, it could pave the way for his trial in absentia over the use of chemical weapons in Ghouta in 2013 and Douma in 2018, and set a precedent to allow the prosecution of other government leaders linked to atrocities, human rights activists and lawyers say. Assad has retained no lawyers for these charges and has denied he was behind the chemical attacks. Ruling could open door for prosecutions in other countries A ruling against Assad would be 'a huge victory for the victims,' said Mazen Darwish, president of the Syrian Center for Media which collected evidence of war crimes. 'It's not only about Syrians, this will open the door for the victims from any country and this will be the first time that a domestic investigative judge has the right to issue an arrest warrant for a president during his rule.' He said the ruling could enable his group to legally go after regime members, like launching a money laundering case against former Syrian Central Bank governor and Minister of Economy Adib Mayaleh, whose lawyers have argued he had immunity under international law. For over 50 years, Syria was ruled by Hafez Assad and then his son Bashar. During the Arab Spring, rebellion broke out against their tyrannical rule in 2011 across the country of 23 million, igniting a brutal 13-year civil war that killed more than half a million people, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights. Millions more fled to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Europe. The Assad dynasty manipulated sectarian tensions to stay in power, a legacy driving renewed violence in Syria against minority groups despite promises that the country's new leaders will carve out a political future for Syria that includes and represents all its communities. The ruling stripping Assad's immunity could set a 'significant precedent' that 'could really set the stage for potentially for other cases in national jurisdictions that strike down immunities,' said Mariana Pena, a human rights lawyer at the Open Society Justice Initiative, which helped bring the case to court. As the International Criminal Court has issued arrests warrants for leaders accused of atrocities — like Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza, and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines — the French judges' ruling could empower the legal framework to prosecute not just deposed and exiled leaders but those currently in power. Assad allegedly bombed, tortured and gassed civilians The Syrian government denied in 2013 that it was behind the Ghouta attack, an accusation the opposition rejected as Assad's forces were the only side in the brutal civil war to possess sarin. The United States subsequently threatened military retaliation, but Washington settled for a deal with Moscow for Assad to give up his chemical weapons' stockpile. Assad survived more than a decade longer, aided militarily by Russia and Iranian-backed proxies. Activists and human rights group accuse him of using barrel bombs, torture, and massacres to crush opponents. But then in late 2024, a surprise assault by rebels swept into Aleppo and then Damascus, driving the dictator to flee for his ally Russia on Dec. 8, 2024. While Darwish and others plan to press Interpol and Russia to extradite him, they know it is unlikely. But an arrest warrant issued by France could lay the groundwork for the former dictator's trial in absentia or potential arrest if he travels outside Russia. Any trial of Assad, whether in absentia or if he leaves Russia, would mean this evidence could then 'be brought to light,' Pena said, including an enormous trove of classified and secret evidence amassed by the judges during their investigations. Syrians often took great personal risk to gather evidence of war crimes. Darwish said that in the aftermath of a chlorine gas attack in Douma, for example, teams collected eyewitness testimonies, images of devastation, and soil samples. Others then tracked down and interviewed defectors to build a 'chain of command' for the regime's chemical weapons production and use. 'We link it directly to the president himself, Bashar al-Assad,' he said. Head of state immunity is 'almost taboo' Assad was relatively safe under international law. Heads of state could not be prosecuted for actions taken during their rule, a rule designed long ago to ease dialogue when leaders needed to travel the world to meet, said Jeanne Sulzer, a French lawyer who co-led the case against Assad for the 2013 chemical attack. She said that kind of immunity is 'almost a taboo' regardless of the weight of the charges. 'You have to wait until the person is not a sitting in office to be able to prosecute,' she said. But that protection has been whittled away over the years by courts ruling that the brutality of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Charles Taylor in Liberia, and Slobodan Milošević in Yugoslavia, to name just a few, merited a restructuring of the world's legal foundations, said James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative. Ending impunity in Syria Syria today remains beholden to many awful legacies of the Assad dynasty. Poverty, sectarianism, destruction, and violence still haunt the Syrian Arab Republic. Damascus' new rulers are investigating nearly 300 people for crimes during several days of fighting on Syria's coast earlier this year. The interim authorities in Damascus have pledged to work with the United Nations on investigating further war crimes of the Assad regime and the civil war. The global chemical weapons watchdog has called on the new government of interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa to protect and dismantle Assad's stockpiles. Darwish is working on 29 cases against Assad and other regime figures who have fled to Russia, the Gulf, Lebanon and Europe. He said many Syrians hope Assad sits for a fair trial in Syria. 'It should be done in Damascus, but we need also a lot of guarantees that we will have a fair trial even for this suspect,' he said. His organization has already received requests to bring to court war crimes accusations against those involved in recent bloodshed in southern Syria. 'So anyone, whatever his name, or the regime, or their authority, we will keep fighting this type of crime,' Darwish said. Sam Mcneil, The Associated Press
CTV News
12 hours ago
- CTV News
Syria's Druze fear for their future after sectarian clashes
Burned vehicles sit on a street Monday, July 21, 2025, after clashes between Bedouin clans and Druze militias in Sweida, Syria. (AP Photo/Fahd Kiwan) DAMASCUS, Syria — Before the eruption of sectarian violence in southern Syria, Saber Abou Ras taught medical sciences at a university in the city of Sweida and was somewhat hopeful of a better future for his country as it emerged from nearly 14 years of civil war. Now, like many others in the Druze-majority city in southern Syria, he carries arms and refuses to give them up to the government. He sees little hope for the united Syria he recently thought was in reach. 'We are for national unity, but not the unity of terrorist gangs,' Abou Ras, a Druze, told The Associated Press in a phone call from the battered city. Clashes broke out last week that were sparked by tit-for-tat kidnappings between armed Bedouin clans and fighters with the Druze religious minority. The violence killed hundreds of people and threatened to unravel Syria's fragile postwar transition. Syrian government forces intervened to end the fighting, but effectively sided with the clans. Disturbing videos and reports soon surfaced of Druze civilians being humiliated and executed, sometimes accompanied by sectarian slurs. One showed gunmen in military uniform asking an unarmed man about his identity. When he replies that he is Syrian, the gunmen demand, 'What do you mean Syrian? Are you Sunni or Druze?' When the man says he is Druze, the men open fire, killing him. Hossam Saraya, a Syrian-American Druze from Oklahoma, was shown in another video, kneeling with his brother, father, and at least three other relatives, before a group of men in military garb sprayed them with automatic fire and celebrated. A religious sect with roots in Islam The Druze religious sect is an offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. Outsiders are not allowed to convert, and most religious practices are shrouded in secrecy. There are roughly a million Druze worldwide and more than half of them live in Syria. The others live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights — which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981. Though a small community within Syria's population of more than 20 million, Sweida's Druze take pride in their involvement in liberating the country from Ottoman and later French colonial rule, and establishing the present-day Syrian state. During the uprising-turned-civil war that started in 2011, Druze leaders reached a fragile agreement with former President Bashar Assad that gave Sweida semi-autonomy, leaving the minority group to protect its own territory instead of serving in the Syrian military. Most Druze celebrated Assad's fall The Druze largely welcomed the fall of Assad in December in a rebel offensive that ended decades of autocratic rule by the Assad dynasty. The Druze were largely skeptical of the Islamist background of Syria's interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa, especially as he once led the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front. But many, including influential clerics, supported diplomatically engaging with the new leadership. Among those more hostile towards al-Sharaa is spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri and a faction of Druze militias called the Sweida Military Council. There were intense divisions between them and others in the Druze community for months. Previous clashes between Druze armed groups and government forces were resolved before the violence could escalate. A security agreement was reached between the Druze and Damascus in May that was intended to bring about long-term calm. But the recent clashes and sectarian attacks in Sweida have upset that balance, and many Druze appear to have lost hope in reaching a fair settlement diplomatically. Sectarian violence after the fall of Assad Many Druze see the government's attacks as an extension of a wave of sectarian violence that broke out months ago on Syria's coast. Clashes between the new government's forces and Assad loyalists spiraled into revenge killings targeting members of the Alawite minority to which Assad belongs. A government investigation into the coastal violence found that more than 1,400 people were killed, mostly civilians, and that members of the security forces were implicated in the attacks. The difference in Sweida, as Abou Ras, the Druze medical sciences professor, sees it, is that the Druze had their own armed factions that were able to fight back. 'They talked about respecting minorities and the different components of Syria,' he said. 'But what happened at the coast was a hard lesson for Syrians, and we learned from it.' The interim president denies that Druze are being targeted After the violence in Sweida, Al-Sharaa vowed to hold perpetrators to account, and restated his promises since taking power that he will not exclude Syria's minority groups. He and other officials have insisted that they are not targeting the Druze, but armed factions that are challenging state authority, namely those led by al-Hijri. Al-Sharaa also accused Israel of trying to exacerbate divisions in the country by launching airstrikes on government forces in the province, which Israel said was in defense of the Druze. The tensions have already created new challenges to forging national unity. Other minority groups — particularly the Kurdish forces controlling Syria's northeast, who have been in negotiations with Damascus to merge with the new national army — are reconsidering surrendering their weapons after seeing the violence in Sweida. A Syrian Druze who lived abroad for over 20 years was in Syria when Assad fell and celebrated with friends and family on the streets of Sweida. He quit his job to move back and be involved with the community. He joined in with people who waved Syria's new flag that symbolized the uprising, danced, and stepped on torn portraits of Assad. He said he wanted al-Sharaa to be successful, but now he doesn't see a peaceful future for Syria's different ethnic and religious groups with him at the helm. 'In every household (in Sweida), someone has died,' he told the AP. The Associated Press could not confirm that independently as there was no official death toll. However, it was a sentiment frequently shared by Syrians from Sweida. He asked to have his name and other identifying details withheld out of fear for his and his family's safety. 'I think after the massacres that happened, there is not a single person in Sweida that wants anything to do with this government, unfortunately,' he said. 'This government butchered people, and butchered any possibility to (bring) reconciliation and harmonize the south.' ___ Kareem Chehayeb And Abdulrahman Shaheen, The Associated Press Chehayeb reported from Beirut.
