NGO fears for Syrians as munitions explosion kills eight

An unexploded munitions ignited at a house in northwestern Syria, killed eight civilians including three children according to a war monitor, Al-Monitor via AFP reported on February 20th.

The explosion of war munitions caused eight deaths which ” include[ed] three children, one of them an infant, and two women,” The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

While journalists were blocked from entering the scene for fear of further explosions, an AFP correspondent said that rescue teams were digging bodies out from under the fallen house in Al-Nayrab – located on the outskirts of the main northern city of Aleppo.

Mohammed Ibrahim, a civil defence worker, called the scene an “explosion of unknown provenance,” and later confirmed: “When teams headed to the site, they found unexploded ordnance.”

The lethal blast was reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights a day after a different organisation said two out of three Syrians are in danger of being killed or getting wounded by unexploded ordnance.

Experts at Humanity and Inclusion, an NGO that works to promote humanitarian relief efforts in places of poverty and conflict areas, estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 of the roughly one million munitions used during the war had never detonated.

The group had warned on February 19th of the dangers posed by unexploded munitions left over from the civil war in Syria.

As reported by France 24 via AFP, in January alone, 125 unexploded ordnance accidents were recorded in which at least 85 people were killed and 152 injured, according to Humanity and Inclusion.

Danila Zizi, the group’s Syria programme director, said the tragedy was “an absolute disaster” and warned that, out of a population of around 23 million, “more than 15 million people (are) at risk” of similar tragedies.

The director went on to note that mines planted by Islamic State group jihadists during their slow retreat in the late 2010s meant there were also “lots of booby traps that have never been really marked or mapped”.

Al-Monitor via AFP, France 24 via AFP