BEIRUT: A bombing at an ammunition depot killed 11 people on Friday in the jihadist-held city of Idlib in northwestern Syria.

It targeted the arms store belonging to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an alliance led by Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The blast killed seven HTS fighters and four other people, the war monitor said. “Initial information points to a car bomb,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

HTS controls the city of Idlib, as well as the surrounding anti-regime bastion of the same name. Last week, the jihadist-led alliance took administrative control of the whole of the region – which is made up of a large part of the Idlib province, as well as adjacent chunks of the Aleppo and Hama provinces.  But the Islamic State group also have a presence in the area. Abdel Rahman said IS was likely responsible for the bombing after HTS executed members of the extremist group the previous day.