At the least 20 individuals, most of them girls, have been killed in a automobile bomb assault in northern Syria, the nation’s presidency says.
The Syria Civil Defence, also called the White Helmets, mentioned a automobile full of explosives blew up on a major street within the southern outskirts of the town of Manbij as a flat-bed lorry carrying about 30 agricultural staff drove previous.
The company had earlier put the dying toll at 15, together with 11 girls and three ladies. One other 15 girls and ladies have been wounded, a few of them critically.
The presidency vowed to make sure that the perpetrators of what it described as a “terrorist” assault would face the “most extreme punishments”.
There was no speedy declare from any armed teams for the bombing, which was the deadliest since insurgent forces overthrow president Bashar al-Assad in December.
The commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led alliance backed by the US which controls a lot of north-eastern Syria, condemned the assault as a “legal act” that threatened the “unity of the nationwide material”.
Earlier, his media chief alleged that such bombings have been among the many “basic techniques” utilized by Turkish-backed factions referred to as the Syrian Nationwide Military (SNA), which the SDF has been battling within the Manbij space over the previous two months.
The SNA didn’t touch upon the allegation. Nonetheless, the Turkey-based Syrian Islamic Council accused the SDF of being behind the blast.
Monday’s automobile bombing was the second such assault within the Manbij space in solely three days.
On Saturday, two youngsters and a lady have been amongst 4 individuals killed by an explosion on a avenue within the metropolis centre, the Syria Civil Defence mentioned.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, reported that the blast was close to an SNA navy place and that 9 individuals have been killed, together with a number of pro-Turkish fighters.
Because the Assad regime collapsed the SNA launched an offensive to seize territory west of the River Euphrates which the SDF had held since driving out the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) in 2016.
The SNA took management of Manbij on 9 December, after fighters from the SDF-affiliated Manbij Army Council withdrew. However since then, the SDF has tried to retake the territory by launching a counter-offensive.
Turkey desires to push the SDF away from its border as a result of it views the Kurdish militia that dominates the alliance, the Individuals’s Safety Items (YPG), as a terrorist organisation. It says the YPG is an extension of the Kurdistan Employees’ Get together (PKK), which has fought for Kurdish autonomy in Turkey for many years.
The automobile bombing got here amid talks between Syria’s transitional authorities and the SDF on the militia alliance’s future.
The commander of the SDF, Mazloum Abdi, met President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus final week, and advised the Related Press information company on Sunday that the 2 sides have been negotiating with the assistance of Western mediators.
“Our imaginative and prescient of Syria is a decentralized, secular and civil nation based mostly on democracy that preserves the rights of all of its parts,” he mentioned, referring to the nation’s many non secular and ethnic teams.
When requested whether or not he was ready to dissolve the SDF, Abdi mentioned that in precept it needed to be a part of Syria’s defence ministry and a part of the nation’s defence technique, however that the small print nonetheless needed to be mentioned, in accordance with AP.
Sharaa, whose Islamist group led the insurgent offensive which ended Assad’s 24-year rule, advised Turkish TV final month that he needed Syrian Kurdish teams to disarm.
“Stopping bloodshed and treating everybody equally is our prime precedence. Subsequently, we imagine all weapons have to be underneath state management,” he mentioned.
