Blast kills nearly all the leaders of Syrian rebel group Ahrar al-Sham
Mystery surrounds the cause of an explosion that wipes out most of the top echelon of largest group fighting to topple Assad regime
An explosion of uncertain origin has killed nearly all the leaders of the largest rebel group fighting to topple the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
At least two dozen senior leaders of Ahrar al-Sham, a conservative Islamist group, died in the blast on Tuesday, which came 10 days after the group had distanced itself from al-Qaeda's official Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front. The death toll, by some accounts, was as high as 75.
The rebel group hurriedly named new commanders. Hashim al-Sheikh Abu Jaber would replace Hassan Abboud as overall commander, the group announced. Abboud was also head of the Islamic Front's political bureau. There was no immediate indication of his replacement in that role.
Activists and witnesses gave varying versions of what took place at the former government agricultural research centre outside the town of Ram Hamdan near the Turkish border that had become a major Ahrar al-Sham base.
One account attributed the blast to a car bomb. But a senior member of Ahrar al-Sham, who tweets under the pseudonym Mujahid al-Sham, posted on Twitter that the explosion had originated in a workshop for manufacturing bombs that was adjacent to the room where the Ahrar al-Sham leaders were meeting. He said the explosion detonated huge amounts of TNT.
Syria analyst Charles Lister, writing for the Huffington Post, said that "the most likely scenario appears to be that a government air strike targeted the meeting, which was taking place in an underground bunker.
Only one survivor was reported, Allam Abboud, Hassan Abboud's younger brother. He was reportedly in a critical condition in hospital.
Sham said in his Twitter account that the devastated meeting room had no windows and had quickly filled with acrid black smoke from the blast. He said it took 10 minutes for rescuers to reach the blast site and that by that time, most of the leaders and their bodyguards had suffocated.
Zaki al-Idilbi, a reporter for the opposition Orient TV, said that doctors who examined the dead told him that most of them had died from smoke inhalation and that injuries from the explosion itself were few. He said that most of the bodies had already been buried hours after the explosion, though a few were still waiting to be claimed by relatives.
Idilbi said the meeting of so many key leaders had been called to consider whether Ahrar al-Sham should join a new rebel coalition, the Council for Leading the Revolution, that would unite moderate rebels, including those receiving US aid.
The decision to join the coalition, whose formation was announced hours after the explosion, would have been a major change for the group.
The explosion could mean the end of the organisation, which was once thought to have had as many as 35,000 fighters.
Those fighters are now likely to drift to one of the other groups fighting in Syria - the Free Syrian Army, Nusra Front or the Islamic State, the extremist group that has declared an Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq.
One of the group's surviving leaders was located and asked whether there was an official statement on what took place. "We are waiting for our brothers who are still alive to regroup so we can hold a meeting."
