Car bomb kills five in Turkish-controlled Syria

BEIRUT — A car bomb near a vegetable market in northeastern Syria killed five people including children on Saturday in the Turkish-held border town of Ras Al Ain, a war monitor said.

At least three of the victims killed were civilians, but the identity of the other two was not immediately clear, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Four others were wounded, it said.

The Turkish defence ministry said two children had been killed and two civilians wounded.

Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies in October 2019 seized a 120-kilometre stretch of land inside the Syrian border from Kurdish forces, running from Ras Al Ain to Tal Abyad.

Turkey blamed the attack on the Kurdish-led People's Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara accuses of being the Syrian offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), that has waged an insurgency against Turkey since 1984.

The YPG has also played a key role in the US-backed fight against the Daesh terror group in Syria.

Such bombings are common in Ras Al Ain.