At least 14 people were killed and 11 others wounded on Wednesday after an explosion tore through a temporary weapons storage site near the city of Sarmada in Syria's northwestern Idlib province.

Syria's Defense Ministry confirmed that the depot was being used to store weapons and munitions left over from the country's civil war, which lasted from 2011 to 2024, before they could be transported elsewhere. The ministry said some of its own personnel were among those injured.

The blast occurred at Burj al-Nimra village in the northern Idlib countryside. Emergency teams were immediately dispatched to the scene following the explosion.

"The toll from the explosion in a temporary storage for collecting weapons and war remnants near the city of Sarmada ... registered 14 killed and 11 injured in a preliminary count," the Idlib health department said.

The initial explosion triggered secondary blasts and fires, hampering the efforts of firefighting teams to bring the situation under control. Thick smoke billowed from the site for hours.

Emergency services and Red Cross workers rushed to the scene to search for survivors potentially trapped beneath the rubble. Bodies were recovered at the site.

Authorities have not yet determined what caused the explosion.

Wednesday's incident was the second fatal explosion of its kind in Idlib province this month. On September 1, five people were killed and others wounded when a vehicle carrying ammunition exploded in the town of Binnish, also in Idlib province.

Syria only recently emerged from more than a decade of civil war, after forces loyal to President Ahmed al-Sharaa ousted Bashar Assad and took control of Damascus in late 2024. Idlib was among the hardest-hit regions during the conflict and remains heavily contaminated with unexploded ordnance.