Car bomb in north Syria kills 18, most civilians

BEIRUT: A car bomb on Tuesday killed 18 people, including at least 13 civilians, in the Turkish-controlled town of Al-Bab in northern Syria, a war monitor said.

The explosion near a bus station in the town also wounded at least 75 people, some of them seriously, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said the remaining five victims could not immediately be identified.

Turkey and its Syrian proxies control several pockets of territory on Syria’s side of the border following three military incursions since 2016.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the car bombing, but there has been a string of attacks in Al-Bab since its capture by Turkish troops from the Islamic State group in 2017. The town, 40 kilometres (25 miles) northeast of Syria’s second city Aleppo, was one of the western-most strongholds of the jihadists’ self-styled territorial “caliphate”.