Five killed as car bombing targets northern Syrian town of Azaz

No group has claimed responsibility, although several terrorist organisations operate in the area

Civilians carry victims at the scene of an explosion in Azaz, northern Syria, on January 31, 2021. The town is in a rural, rebel-controlled part of Aleppo governorate. AFP

Five people were killed and more than 25 injured in Northern Aleppo after a car bomb exploded near the offices of the Syrian opposition Interim Government in Azaz, Syria's Al Watan newspaper reported on Sunday.

The rural town in Syrian-Kurdish territory has been occupied by Turkish forces and allied militias, comprising Turkish-backed and funded remnants of the Free Syrian Army.

Unconfirmed reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, suggested that 35 people were killed. It was not known how the Observatory obtained the death toll and its claim could not be independently verified.

State news agency Sana reported the bombing but did not say how many people were killed or injured.

Graphic photographs from the scene showed one burning single-storey building, burnt-out cars and survivors carrying dead and wounded civilians from the site of the blast.

An AFP reporter at the scene saw a mangled car ablaze, black smoke billowing into the sky.

A man rushed away from the site of the blast, carrying what appeared to be a child wrapped in a bloodied cloth.

A separate suicide car bombing at a checkpoint manned by the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) in the Bezaa area, also in Northern Aleppo, killed six FSA members and injured four, FSA sources said.

Areas of northern Syria are regularly rocked by such bombings.

Turkish forces and their Syrian insurgent allies seized territory in the region in an offensive in 2019 against the Kurdish YPG militia which holds parts of north and east Syria.

Turkey regards the YPG as a terrorist group tied to the PKK inside its own borders.

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

It has since evolved into a complex conflict involving militants and foreign powers.