Car bomb kills 11 civilians in northern Syria: monitor

BEIRUT: A car bomb near a hospital in a town held by Turkey-backed Syrian rebels in northern Syria killed 11 civilians on Sunday, a monitor said.

The blast struck in Al-Rai near the Turkish border, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing near the town's entrance, the second such deadly blast in the wider rebel-held area since June.

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A member of the rebel security forces, Osama Abu al-Kheir, told AFP that a refrigerator truck blew up outside a healthcare centre.

The deputy head of the town council, Alaa al-Hammad, said the truck appeared to have been detonated by remote control.

A pharmacist and two of his children were among those killed, he said, adding that nearby homes were reduced to rubble.

Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels launched a military operation against both the Islamic State (IS) group and Kurdish fighters in northern Syria in 2016, seizing Al-Rai and the nearby town of Azaz.

In June, another car bomb killed 19 people near a bustling market and mosque in Azaz.

Ankara keeps Turkish troops and intelligence forces in the area, and it backs Syrian rebels serving as police officers.

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Turkish troops and Syrian rebels also seized the northwestern enclave of Afrin to the west of Al-Rai from Kurdish fighters last year.

The Kurds have established a semi-autonomous region in the northeast of the country during Syria's eight-year war, but Ankara considers their fighters to be "terrorists".

Ankara and Washington last month said they would work together to set up a buffer area inside northeastern Syria along the Turkish border after Kurdish fighters had withdrawn.

A first joint Turkish-US patrol surveyed the area to the east of the Euphrates River last week.

IS lost the last of its territory in Syria to a US-backed Kurdish-led offensive in March, but the militant group has since claimed deadly attacks in the northeast.