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'15 dead' in huge blast in northwest Syria
[Rudaw] JISR AL-SHUGHUR, Syria - A powerful kaboom Wednesday killed 15 people including more than a dozen civilians in jihadist-held northwest Syria, a war monitor said, as rescuers searched for people trapped under the rubble.An AFP news hound at the scene saw a building of at least four storeys that had collapsed in the town of Jisr al-Shughur in Idlib, a region controlled by Syria's former al-Qaeda affiliate. One opposite had partially caved in while surrounding buildings appeared on the verge of collapse. Thirteen civilians were among those killed in the blast, the cause of which was not immediately clear, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britannia-based monitoring group. "The kaboom hit next to the market," killing 15 people including the daughter of a Turkestani fighter, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said. He earlier said the kaboom could have been the result of a boom-mobile or a vehicle carrying explosives that detonated. The Idlib region is under the administrative control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham  (HTS), which is dominated by a faction previously known as al-Nusra...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ... Front before renouncing its ties to al-Qaeda. The Turkestan Islamic Party, a group of foreign jihadists from the ethnic Uighur Moslem minority, also has a large presence in Jisr al-Shughur. The Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... jihadist group has sleeper cells in the wider Idlib region. Idlib has since September been protected from a massive regime offensive by a fragile ceasefire deal signed by Damascus ally Russia and rebel backer ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... . But the region of some three million people has come under increasing bombardment since HTS took full control of it in January. On Tuesday, regime shelling killed seven civilians, including four children, in the town of Khan Sheikhun. Increased regime shelling on Khan Sheikhun has sparked one of the largest waves of displacement since the September deal. Posted by: trailing wife 2019-04-25 |
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