Israel drops ‘earthquake bomb’: Colossal explosion hits Syrian coast as air strikes target depots

Published December 16, 2024

‘Colossal’ explosions have filled the skies in Syria as Israeli strikes are said to have targeted military sites in the ‘the heaviest strikes’ in the area for more than a decade – with blasts which registered on earthquake sensors.

A war monitor group said that Israeli strikes had targeted military sites in Syria’s coastal Tartus region.

‘Israeli warplanes launched strikes’ targeting a series of sites including air defence units and ‘surface-to-surface missile depots’, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in what it said were ‘the heaviest strikes in Syria’s coastal region since the start of strikes in 2012’.

It has been claimed that the explosion was so large, it measured as a magnitude 3.0 on seismic sensors.

Tartus has been the location of one of Russia‘s two military bases in Syria and was used as a naval base, as well as an ammunition depot.

The huge explosion, as well as secondary explosions, may indicate the presence of a large volume of stored armaments.

Dramatic videos circulating on social media showed a huge bright flash followed by several explosions which sent an enormous mushroom cloud of smoke into the air.

Russia’s foreign ministry earlier today said it had evacuated some of its diplomatic staff from Syria, a week after the fall of the nation’s dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Smoke rises over Syrian warehouses after alleged Israeli strikes

According to researcher Richard Cordaro the blast was detected by a magnetometer station 820km away in Isnik in western Turkiye.

He added that the signal had travelled about ‘as twice as fast’ as that of a typical earthquake.

A naval military base was first established by the Soviet Union in Tartus in 1971.

Until 2017 the facility was classed as a ‘Material-Technical Support Point’ rather than a base, and is Russia’s only entrance point to the Mediterranean.

The centre was used for the delivery of armaments and supplies as Russia intervened in the Syrian civil war in 2015.