Car bomb kills 9 in northern Syria town

BEIRUT: A car bomb killed nine people including four civilians in a Turkish-held border town in northern Syria on Saturday, a Britain-based war monitor said.

Two children were among those killed in Tal Abyad, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing.

But Ankara´s defence ministry in a statement blamed Kurdish forces who controlled the town before Turkish troops and proxy fighters overran it last month.

An AFP photographer saw smoke billow from the twisted burnt remains of a pick-up truck inside the town, and a bright red blood stain on the road nearby.

Pro-Turkey fighters and men in civilian clothes carried away human remains in a waterproof cover, he said.

The area has been shaken by repeated such bombings since Turkish troops carried out a cross-border operation last month.

The Turkish invasion against Kurdish-controlled areas saw Ankara´s fighters seize a strip of land roughly 120 kilometres long and 30 kilometres deep on the Syrian side of the border.

The operation launched on October 9 displaced tens of thousands and left dozens of civilians dead, and forced Kurdish forces to retreat from some key towns.

On November 10, Turkey blamed Kurdish fighters for another bombing that took the lives of eight people in the village of Suluk southeast of Tal Abyad.

A week earlier, another car bomb killed 13 people in Tal Abyad, according to the Observatory.

Syria´s Kurds have been a key ally of the US in fighting the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria, but Turkey sees them as “terrorists” linked to a Kurdish insurgency at home.

Kurdish-led Syrian forces expelled IS from its last patch of land in March, but the jihadists have continued to claim deadly attacks.

Syria Kurds say repatriated US child, German and children: Syria’s Kurds have handed over an American child and three German children and their mother to their respective governments, a Kurdish official said.

After years of leading the battle against the Islamic State group in Syria, the Kurds hold hundreds of foreign men, and thousands of related women and children suspected of links to the extremists.

Abdelkarim Omar, a senior official with the Kurdish authorities in northeastern Syria, said the handover went ahead on Friday.

“An American child and three German children with their mother were handed over to their governments,” he said in a statement on Twitter.

Germany´s Bild newspaper has reported the American child was the daughter of the German woman´s first husband, who was a US citizen.

Germany on Friday said it was repatriating its first IS suspect, and that she and her three German children had crossed into Iraq on their way home.

Spiegel magazine named the mother as Laura H., 30, and said she and her children had been living in the overcrowded Al-Hol camp for the displaced in northeastern Syria.

Syria Kurds battle Turkey-led offensive: Kurdish-led fighters sought to fend off Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies near a key town in northern Syria, a Britain-based war monitor said.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said pro-Ankara fighters had launched an attack on Ain Issa, where they have bases and offices.

“Turkish forces launched attacks with tanks, artillery and a large number of mercenaries... to invade Ain Issa,” they said in a statement on Twitter in English.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said Turkish drones and artillery batteries were backing pro-Ankara fighters in clashes a kilometre (less than a mile) from the town.

“The SDF are trying to prevent Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies from advancing towards the town,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Ankara and its Syrian proxies on October 9 launched a cross-border attack against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria after the United States said it would be withdrawing troops from the region.