Syria depot blast toll 69

BEIRUT, Aug 13, (Agencies): The death toll of an explosion at a weapons depot in northwestern Syria has risen to 69, mostly civilians including 17 children, a monitor said Monday as search operations continued.

Sunday’s blast of unknown origin in the town of Sarmada in Idlib province took the lives of 52 civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The explosion also killed 17 members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a jihadist-led alliance, according to the Britain-based monitor, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.

“Rescue operations are still ongoing,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP, more than 24 hours after the blast at the depot inside a residential building.

Most of the civilians killed were family members of HTS fighters displaced to the area from the central province of Homs, he said.

HTS controls more than half of Idlib province and is led by jihadists from Syria’s former al-Qaeda affiliate.

Most of the rest is held by rebels, while the regime also holds a slither of the province’s southeast.

The Islamic State jihadist group also has sleeper cells in the area.

In recent months, a series of explosions and assassinations — mainly targeting rebel officials and fighters — have rocked the province.

While some attacks have been claimed by IS, most are the result of infighting since last year between other groups.

Regime forces have in the past week ramped up their deadly bombardment of southern Idlib and sent reinforcements to nearby areas they control.

President Bashar al-Assad has warned that government forces intend to retake control of Idlib, after his Russia-backed regime regained chunks of territory from rebels and jihadists in other parts of Syria.

Around 2.5 million people live in the province, half of them displaced by fighting in other regions of the country.

More than 350,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since Syria’s civil war started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.

Meanwhile, Syrian government officials vowed Monday to ensure the safe return of refugees and urged Western countries to encourage the process by lifting sanctions.

Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said the refugees’ return is a top priority for Damascus, adding that “the Syrian government will facilitate their return by all means.” He added that the country would welcome any foreign assistance, provided it comes with no preconditions.

Public Administration Minister Hussein Makhlouf said authorities are working to rebuild hospitals, schools and other infrastructure to help accommodate refugees.

President Bashar Assad’s forces, with Russian air support, have won a series of victories in recent months against opposition fighters, who are now mainly confined to the northern Idlib province. The fighting is over in much of the country, but many of the more than 5 million refugees fear mandatory conscription or reprisal from government forces if they return. Others have nowhere to go after their homes and businesses were destroyed.

Speaking to international reporters in Damascus, Makhlouf claimed that the government has restored more than 5,000 schools and 250 hospitals, and that about 3.5 million internally displaced people have regained their homes in Syria.

“The return of refugees is a necessary condition for the country’s rebuilding and development,” he said.

Makhlouf called on Western countries to lift an economic embargo imposed early in the seven-year conflict that was aimed at pressuring Assad to step down, noting that it would help restore the Syrian economy and encourage the refugees’ return.

His statement echoed calls by Russian officials, who urged the US and its Western allies to provide humanitarian assistance to Syria and help rebuild its economy.

The Russian military in Syria set up a mechanism to help settle issues related to the refugees’ return. Moscow, which has provided crucial military support to Assad, is eager to show that the situation in Syria is normalizing now that the government has recaptured most opposition strongholds.

The United Nations refugee agency says it is premature to promote returns to Syria as it is still dangerous, but that refugees who want to return should be supported.

Speaking to reporters on a trip to Syria organized by the Russian Defense Ministry, Maj Ruslan Nigmatulin said that Russian military officers are working with Syrian authorities to help settle organizational, medical and other problems faced by refugees.

Nigmatulin, who is in charge of one of the five checkpoints set up on the border with Lebanon to facilitate refugees’ return, said that about 5,000 Syrians have come back to the country since the checkpoints opened on Aug 1. He said those who lack IDs and other documents are quickly issued new ones by Syrian officials stationed at the checkpoints.

Dozens of Syrian refugees left Lebanon by bus on Monday in the latest of a wave of returns to their war-torn country, Lebanese authorities said.

An AFP photographer in the southern town of Shebaa saw women and children wait to board buses, while men loaded belongings on the back of a large pick-up truck.

Lebanon’s General Security agency “secured the voluntary return of 137 displaced Syrians from the areas of Shebaa and central Bekaa through the Masnaa border crossing towards Syria,” it said it a statement.

Lebanon hosts around 1.5 million Syrians who fled the civil war across the border, many of them in the Bekaa Valley in the east of the country.