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Car Bomb Kills Nine In Northern Syria Town – Monitor

A car bomb killed nine people including four civilians in a Turkish-held border town in northern Syria on Saturday, a Britain-based war monitor said.


This picture taken on November 23, 2019 shows the aftermath of a car bomb explosion at the industrial zone in the northern Syrian town of Tal Abyad, on the border with Turkey. Several people were killed, including civilians, over a dozen injured by the blast in the Turkish-controlled northern Syrian town. Turkey and its Syrian proxies control several pockets of territory on the Syrian side of the border as a result of successive incursions in 2016-17, 2018 and 2019. Zein Al RIFAI / AFP
This picture taken on November 23, 2019 shows the aftermath of a car bomb explosion at the industrial zone in the northern Syrian town of Tal Abyad, on the border with Turkey. Zein Al RIFAI / AFP

 

A car bomb killed nine people including four civilians in a Turkish-held border town in northern Syria on Saturday, a Britain-based war monitor said.

Two children were among those killed in Tal Abyad, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing.

But Ankara’s defence ministry in a statement blamed Kurdish forces who controlled the town before Turkish troops and proxy fighters overran it last month.

An AFP photographer saw smoke billow from the twisted burnt remains of a pick-up truck inside the town, and a bright red bloodstain on the road nearby.

Pro-Turkey fighters and men in civilian clothes carried away human remains in a waterproof cover, he said.

The area has been shaken by repeated such bombings since Turkish troops carried out a cross-border operation last month.

The Turkish invasion against Kurdish-controlled areas saw Ankara’s fighters seize a strip of land roughly 120 kilometres long and 30 kilometres deep on the Syrian side of the border.

The operation launched on October 9 displaced tens of thousands and left dozens of civilians dead, and forced Kurdish forces to retreat from some key towns.

On November 10, Turkey blamed Kurdish fighters for another bombing that took the lives of eight people in the village of Suluk southeast of Tal Abyad.

A week earlier, another car bomb killed 13 people in Tal Abyad, according to the Observatory.

Syria’s Kurds have been a key ally of the US in fighting the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria, but Turkey sees them as “terrorists” linked to a Kurdish insurgency at home.

Kurdish-led Syrian forces expelled IS from its last patch of land in March, but the jihadists have continued to claim deadly attacks.