Powerful explosion in Aleppo city not caused by Israeli strikes: report

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A powerful explosion was heard in the administrative capital of the Aleppo Governorate on Saturday morning, a field source told Al-Masdar News.

Syrian state TV also reported the explosion but without given further details.

According to the source, the explosion took place around the defense factions in the Ramouseh District. The source said that the explosions were first thought to be from airstrikes on the Ramouseh District; however, they later ruled this out after investigating the scene of the blast.

The Syrian military and administrative police are still investigating the area to find out what caused the explosion.

Earlier this month, the Israeli Air Force struck the southern town of Al-Safira, which is where the Iranian military advisors are currently based.

The two rounds of airstrikes attributed to Israel on May 4 targeted Iran-linked targets in Syria, including one against a weapons factory in al-Safira outside Aleppo and a second against militia bases in Deir Ezzor in the east of the country.

The Israeli airstrike on southern Aleppo was the last time that any blast has taken place inside the government-held areas.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the airstrike on the al-Safira facility caused massive secondary explosions.

According to the Observatory, the strike on Tehran-backed militia bases in the Deir Ezzor region killed 14 pro-Iranian fighters, who were all either Iranian or Iraqi nationals.

The Britain-based monitor did not report any deaths in the strike on the weapons factory outside Aleppo.

Though Israeli officials generally refrain from taking responsibility for specific strikes in Syria, they have acknowledged conducting hundreds to thousands of raids in the country since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

These have overwhelmingly been directed against Iran and its proxies, notably Hezbollah, but the IDF has also carried out strikes on Syrian air defenses when those batteries have fired at Israeli jets.

Israel’s fight against Iran in Syria has been ongoing for nearly a decade, after Tehran began sending its troops and its proxies into the country at the outbreak of the civil war there in 2011, but recent months have seen an increase in the number of strikes against Iran-linked sites in Syria, with the highest concentration around the capital, Damascus.