Car bomb kills five in Turkish-controlled Syria

A woman and a child were among those killed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said

A Syrian regime soldier waves the national flag a street on the western entrance of the town of Tal Tamr in the countryside of Syria's northeastern Hasakeh province on October 14, 2019. AFP

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

A woman and a child were among those killed, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

At least three of the victims killed were civilians, but the identity of the other two was not immediately clear. Four others were wounded, it said.

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.

Such bombings are common in Ras Al Ain.

On December 10, a car bomb killed 16 people including two civilians and three Turkish personnel at a checkpoint in the town.

In July, the blast from an explosives-rigged motorbike ripped through a vegetable market there, killing at least eight people, including six civilians.

Syria's civil war has killed more than 387,000 people and displaced millions from their homes since starting in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.