Car bomb kills Kurdish police officer in Qamishlo, Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), August 18, 2019. Photo: ANHA
QAMISHLO, Syrian Kurdistan,— A car bomb killed a police officer and wounded two other people Sunday in the main Kurdish city of Qamishlo in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) in in northeast Syria, police said, the second such attack in just over a month.
Kurdish police spokesman Ali al-Hassan said the car bomb was detonated by “remote control” near a school, “killing a member of our (police) forces”.
An AFP correspondent at the scene said the car exploded as a Kurdish police patrol drove by, not far from a Syrian army position.
Firefighters rushed to the scene to put out a blaze that spread from the vehicle to nearby trees, the correspondent said, adding that debris and traces of blood littered the ground.
Syrian state news agency SANA said the car bombing caused casualties but did not give further details.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor reported that a member of the Kurdish Asayish security forces was killed in the bombing.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, the latest to hit Kurdish-held areas of northeast Syria.
In July a car bombing near a church in Qamishlo wounded several people. Another one on August 7, 2019 a car bombing claimed by the Islamic State group killed five people, including three children, in a Kurdish town in al-Qahtaniya, Tirbespiyê district in Jazeera Canton.
Syria’s Kurds have led the US-backed fight in the war-torn country against the Islamic State group, which continues to claim attacks despite losing its last patch of territory earlier this year.
Washington has for years supported the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria, as part of an international anti-jihadist coalition dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). But U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly announced the pullout from Syria.
The Kurdish PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ, considered the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and U.S. has provided them with arms. The YPG, which is the backbone of the SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.
The Kurdish YPG forces expelled the Islamic State group from its last patch of territory in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz in March 2019.
The jihadists have vowed to avenge their defeat at the hands of Kurdish-led forces and maintain a presence in Syria’s vast Badia desert as well as in the east and northeast of the country.
IS retains sleeper cells and has orchestrated a series of car bomb and arson attacks in Kurdish eastern and northeastern Syria since its territorial defeat.
Kurdish forces control most of Qamishlo while Syrian government troops are deployed in the city’s Arab quarters and around the airport.
In 2013, the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD — the political branch of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) — has established three autonomous Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan in 2013. On March 17, 2016, Kurdish authorities announced the creation of a “federal region” made up of those semi-autonomous regions in Syrian Kurdistan.
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | AFP