DAMASCUS: A blast in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia killed at least 10 people on Saturday, state media reported, adding that it was triggered by a scrap dealer mishandling unexploded ordnance.
SANA news agency earlier reported that “the death toll from the explosion at a hardware store” in Latakia’s southern neighborhood of Al-Rimal had been eight.
The news agency said three children and a woman were among the victims of the blast at the store inside a four-story building.
“Fourteen civilians were also injured, including four children,” SANA said.
It said the detonation occurred when the scrap dealer mishandled an unexploded munition in an attempt to recover the metal.
SANA said late Saturday search and rescue operations were ongoing “to extract those trapped under the rubble of the destroyed residential building.”
Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also called the explosion an “accident” resulting from a resident’s attempt to dismantle unexploded ordnance.
One Latakia resident, Ward Jammoul, 32, told AFP she heard a “loud blast,” adding that she “headed to the site and found a completely destroyed building.”
She said civil defense personnel and ambulances were at the scene, along with “a large number of people who had gathered to look for those trapped under the rubble.”
An image carried by the news agency showed a large plume of smoke over a populated neighborhood.
A report by non-governmental organization Humanity and Inclusion had warned last month of the dangers posed by unexploded munitions left over from Syria’s civil war that erupted in 2011.
It said experts estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 of the roughly one million munitions used during the war had never detonated.