The death toll from a building explosion in the Syrian city of Latakia rises to 16.

The death toll from a building collapse caused by an explosion in the western Syrian Mediterranean city of Latakia has risen to 16, including five children and five women, after several bodies were recovered overnight, Syrian officials reported Sunday.

The collapse, which injured 18 others, occurred on Saturday after a powerful explosion on the ground floor, triggered by the detonation of explosive material allegedly stored on the premises, according to the rescue group known as the "White Helmets."

"The death toll from the explosion in the Raml neighborhood (in Latakia) has risen to 16, including five women and five children. Eighteen other people were injured, including six children," the Syrian Civil Defense confirmed, according to the official news agency SANA.

He warned that this is a "preliminary assessment" of the victims, as "rescue operations continue to search for people trapped under the rubble."

For their part, the "White Helmets," who also call themselves the Syrian Civil Defense, and who had reported five deaths on Saturday, confirmed the new death toll today on their X account, and noted that "operations continue in the search for survivors under the rubble."

They indicated that "according to initial information and testimony from residents," the explosion occurred in a hardware store located beneath the building, causing it to collapse, without providing further details.

The incident comes a week after Latakia suffered its worst wave of violence in years, when remnants of the ousted Bashar al-Assad regime launched a series of attacks against security units of the new Syrian administration.

This prompted a response from forces allied with the new Syrian government, which carried out "executions" and "cold-blooded murders" against civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organization monitoring the conflict in Syria since 2011, which stated that nearly 1.500 civilians were killed, including 1.400 from the Alawite minority, a branch of Shiism professed by the Al Assad family.

The United Nations, for its part, reported having identified 111 murders. EFE