19 killed in Syrian border town blast, air strike

ISTANBUL/ BEIRUT: At least 19 people have died Saturday in a car bomb blast near a market in a Syrian border town controlled by Turkish forces, Ankara and a rights watchdog said.

“Based on first findings, 13 civilians were killed and around 20 others injured” in the explosion in the northeastern town of Tal Ayab, Turkey´s defence ministry said in a statement.

It blamed the attack on the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia, which it sees as “terrorist” offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers´ Party (PKK). The PKK, which has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, is blacklisted as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies. But the YPG under the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) banner spearheaded the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria with US support.

Earlier, an air strike Saturday by key Damascus ally Russia killed six civilians including a child in the embattled opposition bastion of Idlib in northwestern Syria, a war monitor.

The strike hit the village of Jaballa in the south of the Idlib region, taking the lives of all six from the same family, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The Britain-based monitor, which relies on sources inside Syria, says it determines who carries out an air strike according to flight patterns, as well as aircraft and ammunition involved.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said it was the bloodiest such Russian air raid in two months since Moscow announced a truce for the surrounding area on August 31. Since then, eight other civilians have been killed in Russian air strikes on different dates in the region, he said.