COVID-19: Fuel truck bomb kills 46, injures 50 in Syria
Most of those killed are civilians; Turkey blames Kurdish militant group
Beirut: A fuel truck bomb killed 46 people, including at least six Turkey-backed rebel fighters on Tuesday in a northern Syrian city controlled by Ankara’s proxies, a war monitor said.
The explosion of a bomb in a fuel truck in a market in Afrin killed “at least 46 people, including civilians, and wounded 50 others,” according to Rami Abdul Rahman, the head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Updating an earlier toll, he said the number could climb still further as some of the wounded were in critical condition.
At least six pro-Turkish Syrian fighters were among the dead, he added.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the blast, one of the largest to rock Afrin since Turkish troops and allied rebels seized the region from Kurdish forces in March 2018 after a two-month air and ground offensive.
The Turkish defence ministry blamed the attack on the Kurdish People’s Protection Units which it views as a “terrorist” offshoot of PKK.