Bomb kills 48, hurts 100 in Syria

Activists say tanker exploded in rebel-held border town

Rescuers work Saturday at the scene where a bomb went off in a busy market in Azaz, Syria, killing dozens of people.
Rescuers work Saturday at the scene where a bomb went off in a busy market in Azaz, Syria, killing dozens of people.

BEIRUT -- A vehicle bomb ripped through a busy commercial district in a rebel-held Syrian town along the Turkish border Saturday, killing nearly 50 people in an explosion that damaged buildings and left rescuers scrambling to find survivors in the wreckage, opposition activists said.

Rescuers and doctors said the explosion wounded and burned nearly 100 people in Azaz. Over 50 wounded were transported to the Turkish border town of Kilis for treatment, as local hospitals couldn't cope with the volume of patients.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Residents said a rigged tanker caused the explosion and blamed Islamic State militants, who have carried out attacks in the town before. The militant group has been increasingly pressed in Syria and Iraq, and has escalated its attacks against Turkey -- which backs Syrian opposition fighters in a campaign against the group in northern Syria.

Islamic State militants held Azaz for six months in 2013, and the group has been blamed for several attacks on the area since it was pushed out by a rebel offensive.

Azaz, only a couple of miles from the Turkish border, is a key town on a route used by opposition fighters moving between Syria and Turkey, and is a hub for anti-government activists as well as many displaced from the recent fighting in Aleppo city. Activists say Azaz's pre-war population of 30,000 has swelled.

Now it is sandwiched between rival groups, including Kurdish fighters to the west and Turkey-backed opposition groups to the east. Islamic State militants, who have tried to advance on the border town before, have been pushed back farther east in recent months in the Turkey-backed offensive.

The bomb went off early Saturday afternoon outside a courthouse and security headquarters operated by the opposition fighters who control the town, resident and activist Saif Alnajdi said from Azaz.

"It hit the busiest part of the town," Alnajdi said, referring to the administrative part of town.

Khalil Abdulrahman, 42, said the driver of the vehicle had plowed through a rebel checkpoint and headed directly for the market and the courthouse.

"Only civilians work in that place. There were so many killed, so many injured," he said.

A medical worker speaking to a local media outfit, al-Jisr, said many charred bodies and body parts mixed with bones and mud were piled up in local hospitals.

Rami Abdurrahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, said at least 48 people were killed, including 14 fighters and guards for the local courthouse. He said the explosion was caused by a rigged water or fuel tanker, which explained the size of the blast and high death toll. The activist-operated Azaz Media center and Shabha Press put the death toll at 60, adding that search-and-rescue operations continued for hours after the explosion.

Alnajdi said rescue workers were still working to identify and remove the bodies from the area, suggesting that the death toll was not final. He said some of the severely wounded were transported across the border into the Turkish town of Kilis for treatment. The Turkish state-run Anadolu news agency said 53 wounded Syrians were transported to Kilis' hospital for treatment. The agency said one later died.

Media activist Baha al-Halabi, based in Aleppo province and who gathered information from Azaz residents, said witnesses reported many unidentified bodies. Footage shared online showed a large plume of black smoke rising above the street with the sound of gunfire in the background as onlookers gathered around the site. In one instance, a father ran away from the scene, carrying his child to safety.

The courthouse and the security headquarters were damaged, as well as the Red Crescent and municipality offices, according to activists in the area.

Many rebels and civilians who were pushed out of Aleppo during a government offensive late last year have resettled in Azaz. Syrian Kurdish forces control territory to the west of Azaz, and have often tried advancing toward the town, causing friction with Turkish troops and allied Syrian opposition fighters.

To the east, opposition fighters backed by Turkey have been pushing back Islamic State extremists, gaining territory and advancing on the Islamic State-stronghold town of al-Bab further east. Turkey considers Syrian Kurdish factions there terrorists, linked to a local group it is battling at home.

A nationwide, weeklong cease-fire has mostly held across most of Syria after Russia and Turkey, who support opposite sides of the conflict, reached an agreement in late December. The cease-fire is set to pave the way for peace talks between Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and the opposition in Kazakhstan later this month. The Islamic State and al-Qaida-linked group Jabhat Fatah al-Sham are not included in the deal, according to the Syrian government.

Information for this article was contributed by Zeynep Bilginsoy of The Associated Press and by Louisa Loveluck and Zakaria Zakaria of The Washington Post.

A Section on 01/08/2017

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