'Huge' explosion near Damascus Airport rocks Syrian capital

A large explosion has hit an area near Damascus international airport, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says

Activist-operated Diary of a Mortar  said the explosion near the airport road was followed by flames rising above the area
Activist-operated Diary of a Mortar said the explosion near the airport road was followed by flames rising above the area

A massive explosion hit near the Damascus International Airport in the early hours of Thursday morning, a monitoring group said, without specifying the cause.

"The blast was huge and could be heard in Damascus," Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.

The Britain-based Observatory, which gathers information from sources across war-ravaged Syria, said it had confirmed the explosion had not taken place inside the airport itself.

Activist-operated Diary of a Mortar, which reports from Damascus, said the explosion near the airport road was followed by flames rising above the area. A pro-government site Damascus Now said the explosion was near the city's Seventh Bridge, which leads to the airport road.

"It's unclear what caused the explosion, but there fires raging at the site," Abdel Rahman told AFP news agency.

A regional intelligence source told Reuters news agency that Israeli forces had struck an arms depot belonging to the Lebanese Hezbollah group.

Two senior rebels told with Reuters that multiple strikes had hit around dawn. They, too, specified that the strikes targeted an ammunition depot complex near Damascus airport that is used by Iranian-backed forces supplied via an air corridor between the Syrian capital and Tehran.

Iran is a major regional ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The rebel sources said their monitors operating in the eastern rural outskirts of the capital where the rebels are based had tracked at least five strikes that hit the airport compound at dawn.

It was not clear if it was a missile or an air strike, they said.

There is no word on casualties.

More than 320,000 people have been killed since Syria's conflict erupted in 2011 with widespread anti-government protests.

While Damascus has remained relatively insulated from the violence, fierce fighting has raged on the outskirts of the capital in recent months between rebel groups and government forces.