A car bomb on Saturday killed five people, including a girl, in the Turkish-controlled area of Afrin in northern Syria, a British-based war monitor said.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the car that contained explosives blew up in a neighborhood where workshops are located, killing the girl, three other civilians and an unidentified individual.
Chief Rami Abdel Rahman of the Observatory said the death toll could increase as 15 other people were injured, some of them in critical condition.
In 2018, Turkish forces and their Syrian allies grabbed the Afrin area from Kurdish troops.
Afrin and other areas under Turkish rule in northern Syria are shaken daily by such bombings.
They are typically not claimed, although Turkey regularly accuses Kurdish fighters of being “terrorists” connected to its illegal Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Another explosive-rigged vehicle killed a civilian in the town of Jindires in the Afrin area in early January. On the same day, five people, including two girls, were killed by a car bomb near a vegetable market in the Turkish border town of Ras al-Ain.
A car bomb exploded near a bakery in Afrin in November, killing three people and injuring 16 others.
Since beginning in 2011, with the violent repression of anti-government demonstrations, the Syrian war has killed more than 387,000 people and displaced millions.
It has developed into a complex conflict between jihadists and foreign forces, including Turkey, which, during many military operations, has captured swathes of Syrian territory along its southern frontier.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
