Islamic State car bomb attack in the main Kurdish city of Qamishlo in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), October 11, 2019. Photo: ANHA
QAMISHLO, Syrian Kurdistan,— At least six people were killed Friday when an explosives-laden vehicle detonated in a busy neighbourhood of Qamishlo, one of the main Kurdish cities in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) in northeastern Syria, officials said, AFP reported.
The attack, which wounded nine others, came as Kurdish forces pushed to hold off a massive cross-border assault by Turkey and its proxies.
The Islamic State jihadist group claimed responsibility for the bomb attack.
IS issued a statement saying its fighters were behind the blast, which a war monitor and Kurdish officials said left six dead, both civilians and members of the security forces.
“A car bomb targeted a restaurant at a time when civilians, including journalists who came to cover the offensive, were inside,” the Kurdish internal security services known as Asayish said in a statement.
A video distributed by the Syrian Democratic Forces — the autonomous Kurds’ de facto army — shows firemen trying to put out flames at the site of the blast, where at least five completely destroyed vehicles could be seen.
Qamishlo has been hit by several car bomb attacks in recent months, usually claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.
IS has not controlled fixed positions in the area since an SDF-led operation eliminated the last bastion of the jihadist “caliphate” earlier this year.
But it has conducted regular deadly operations in remote areas with bomb attacks carried out by sleeper cells.
Analysts and officials have voiced fears that the White House’s plans to pull American troops out of northeastern Syria would create a vacuum that could spark an IS resurgence.
Security responsibility in Qamishlo is shared between the Kurds and regime forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.
Kurdish officials said five detained members of the Islamic State group managed to escape from a Kurdish-run prison in Syrian Kurdistan on Friday after Turkish shelling hit the area.
The Kurdish Democratic Union Party 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 Syrian Democratic Forces SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.
The Kurdish forces expelled the Islamic State from its last patch of territory in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz in March 2019.
11,000 Kurdish male and female fighters had been killed in five years of war to eliminate the Islamic State “caliphate” that once covered an area the size of Great Britain in Syria and Iraq, Kurdish officials said.
The United States already plucked two of the most high-profile IS jihadists to have been captured alive and spirited them out of Syria.
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