Car blast in Syria's Afrin kills at least 11 people – monitor

A car bomb killed at least 11 people and wounded many others on Thursday in the Syrian city of Afrin, medical sources and a war monitor said.

The blast struck an entrance to the city, killing civilians, including children, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitoring group reported.

The Observatory and the medical sources said many other people had been wounded in the explosion, some very badly.

No immediate claim

"Among the victims, at least six are originally from Eastern Ghouta", a former rebel stronghold outside Damascus retaken by the regime last year, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

There was no immediate claim for the blast, which is the latest deadly explosion to rock the city.

Afrin is located north of Aleppo near the border with Turkey and was captured by Turkish-backed opposition forces from YPG militants last year

The YPG is the Syrian offshoot of the PKK terrorist organisation. In PKK's 30-year terror campaign against the Turkish state, more than 40,000 people, including women and children, have been killed.
Turkey, the US and the EU recognise the PKK as a terrorist organisation.

While major fighting has ended, for now, in many parts of Syria, there is still much insecurity, with bombings and other attacks that have targeted civilians in areas controlled by all sides in the conflict.

In June, a car bomb in Azaz, a town near Afrin also controlled by Turkey-backed opposition forces, killed at least 10 people in a busy marketplace on a Ramadan night.