Bomb kills 10 near Syria’s border with Turkey
Local council said residents blamed on the YPG and PKK
Beirut: At least 10 people were killed and 25 wounded when a car bomb exploded on Saturday in a Syrian border town seized by Turkish-backed forces last month, witnesses and a rescuer said.
Tel Abyad was one of two border towns that saw some of the heaviest fighting when Ankara launched its cross-border offensive on October 9 targeting Kurdish YPG forces in northeast Syria.
Saturday’s blast caused extensive damage to a main street in Tel Abyad, sending thick smoke into the air above the wreckage, videos posted on social media showed.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitor, said four civilians from the same family were among those killed by the explosion, which the local council said residents blamed on the YPG and PKK.
Turkey’s Defence Ministry also accused the YPG of carrying out the attack, which it said had killed three people and wounded 20, while a senior spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) accused “Turkish-backed mercenaries” of being responsible.