SULAIMANI (ESTA) — At least five people were killed and scores wounded when a car bomb detonated in the northern Syrian town of Afrin on Saturday, the Turkish defense ministry and local civil defense said.
The ministry said in a statement that the bomb attack took place in an industrial site at the center of the town and wounded 22 people, according to Reuters.
It blamed the attack on the People’s Protection Units (YPG).
There was no immediate comment from the YPG.
Turkey regards the YPG as a “terrorist” group tied to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) inside its own borders, and has staged incursions into Syria in support of Syrian rebels to push it from the Turkish frontier.
Ankara now retains a large military presence in the area deploying thousands of troops in the last rebel enclave.
The local civil defence said the death toll due to the bomb stood at six, including children.
Efrinnews 24, an activist collective that covers events in Afrin, said earlier that the blast killed four Turkey-backed opposition fighters and injured others, according to AP.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Turkey and its allied Syrian rebels took control of Afrin in 2018 in a military operation that ousted U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters and displaced tens of thousands of people.
*This story was updated at 07:27 p.m. EBL time
