BEIRUT: A twin bombing attack targeting Kurds celebrating their New Year Friday killed at least 20 people and wounded more than 70 in a northeast Syrian city, activist groups and state media said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said one of the attacks was carried out by a suicide bomber who belonged to ISIS, and the other was a bomb planted in a nearby area. Twenty people were killed and 80 wounded, the group said.

Syrian state TV quoted the governor of Hassakeh province as saying the bombings killed 22 and wounded more than 70. The station said hospitals in the city were urging people to donate blood.

Kurdish fighters have been battling ISIS for months, leaving hundreds dead. The main Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, has been advancing recently in Hassakeh province. It is a predominantly Kurdish area but ISIS holds parts of the region, which borders Turkey and Iraq.

YPG fighters, with the help of airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition, have evicted ISIS fighters from the northern Syrian town of Ain al-Arab and dozens of nearby villages over the past two months.

Although ISIS did not immediately claim responsibility for the bombings, they were a likely culprit due to their many recent attacks on military and civilian targets in the area.

Ekrem Hasso, an official in northeastern Syria’s Kurdish region, also blamed ISIS and said some of the wounded were being rushed to hospitals in the nearby city of Qamishli and the towns of Amouda and Dirbasiyeh. He said over 50 people were killed and dozens wounded.

“Hassakeh hospitals are flooded with casualties,” Hasso said by telephone from Amouda. He added that Kurdish forces were on high alert in much of northern Syria for fear of more attacks.

Ghalia Nehme, another official in Syria’s Kurdish region, said one of the attacks occurred in a main square in the city of Hassakeh.

Kurdish authorities had announced earlier that no official celebrations would be held for Kurdish New Year, known as Nowruz, due to security concerns, Nehme said. People were celebrating Friday on their own, she said.

“God willing on the eve of this feast all the people will live in peace and there be no such massacres,” Nehme told the Associated Press by telephone from northern Syria.Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Syria, making up more than 10 percent of the country’s 23 million people. They are centered in Hassakeh and Qamishli provinces. The capital Damascus and Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, also have several predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods.

In another development, the Observatory said some 70 troops and pro-government fighters have been killed in attacks by ISIS militants in the central Syria over the past three days. The attacks inHoms and Hama provinces targeted checkpoints and positions manned by government loyalists, it added.

Observatory director Rami Abdel-Rahman told AFP “most of the dead, around 50, fell in the Hama countryside.” Several jihadis were also killed in clashes east of Homs city, he added, without giving a toll.

The regime controls most of Homs and Hama, where ISIS has few positions in the eastern parts of the provinces.

“ISIS has faced setbacks recently in the provinces of Aleppo and Raqqa and in Hassakeh in confrontations with Kurds on the one hand and regime forces on the other, and are now trying to score military points, even limited ones, to offset their losses,” Abdel-Rahman said.

Separately, the Observatory said clashes broke out between regime forces, supported by non-Syrian militiamen and Hezbollah, and moderate rebel and Islamic battalions, in Al-Sabaa Bahrat neighborhood in old Aleppo, Hendarat and Salahuddin. No casualties were reported.

 

 

 

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2015/Mar-21/291668-car-bombs-kill-20-at-syrian-kurdish-new-year-celebration.ashx