Syria monitor says weapons depot blast kills 11

DAMASCUS — An explosion at a weapons depot near Syria's capital Damascus on Sunday killed 11 people, a war monitor said, weeks after rebels ousted longtime leader Bashar Assad.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the cause of the blast in the industrial area of Adra, some 30 kilometres from Damascus, was "likely" to have been an Israeli strike.

But an Israeli military source told AFP in Jerusalem that the army "did not strike in the area".

An official from a nearby area, requesting anonymity, told AFP that "an explosion of unknown origin" rocked the Adra industrial area, reporting an unspecified number of casualties and adding that rescue operations were ongoing.

Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP that "at least 11 people were killed in an explosion likely caused by an Israeli strike" at "a weapons depot belonging to [Assad's] regime" in the Adra area.

An Israeli military source said: "We are not aware of IDF strikes in the area. The IDF did not strike in the area."

Abdel Rahman said that the dead are "mostly civilians", adding that since Assad's ouster, some civilians in the poverty-stricken country have headed to former military positions looking for "anything they can sell", including metal.

Israel carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syrian military facilities after Islamist-led rebels toppled Assad on December 8, saying it aimed to prevent them from falling into hostile hands.