Massive bomb blast kills 44 in Syrian Kurdish city

Residents gather at the site of a bomb attack in the Kurdish city of Qamishli, north-east Syria, on July 27, 2016. Delil Souleiman/AFP

QAMLISHI // A massive bomb blast claimed by ISIL killed at least 44 people and wounded dozens on Wednesday in the predominantly Kurdish north Syrian city of Qamlishli.

It was the largest attack on the city with the biggest loss of life since the beginning of the conflict in Syria in March 2011.

The bomb hit a western district of the city where several local Kurdish ministries are located. Syrian state media gave the death toll as 44 with 140 injured although the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said the deaths numbered 48, including women and children.

The attack was initially described as a double bombing, but local Kurdish officials said it was carried out by a single suicide bomber driving a lorry laden with explosives. The blast then set off a fuel container nearby. The result was devastation with blood-covered civilians staggering through rubble, past twisted metal and the burnt-out remains of cars.

Journalists on the scene described seeing a man drenched in blood running along the streets, gripping the arms of a small boy whose face was smeared grey and red with blood and dust.

They ran past a hysterical woman who was crying and screaming, her clothes torn. A girl and boy stood next to her, apparently in shock.

Children could be heard screaming as smoke rose from small fires that continued to burn among the rubble.

Civilians and local security forces with guns slung across their backs worked to carry the dead and wounded from buildings left damaged or in ruins and hospital were swamped with casualties.

ISIL claimed the attack in a statement circulated on social media, calling it “a response to the crimes committed by the crusader coalition aircraft” in the town of Manbij, an ISIL stronghold in Syria’s Aleppo province.

Kurdish fighters have been a key force in battling the fanatics in north and northeastern Syria and are the main component in the Syrian Democratic Forces alliance currently seeking to push ISIL from Manbij.

They are backed by air strikes launched by the US-led coalition fighting ISIL in Syria and Iraq.

Qamishli is under the shared control of the Syrian regime and Kurdish authorities, who have declared zones of “autonomous administration” across parts of north and north-east Syria.m There have been regular bomb attacks, many of them claimed by IS.

But this was “the largest explosion the city has ever seen”, according to a source in the Kurdish Asayesh security forces.

The area that was targeted houses several Kurdish administration buildings including the defence ministry and was considered a secure zone, with multiple checkpoints and security measures in place.

“This blast is the biggest in Qamishli in terms of both the toll and the damage since the beginning of the war,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syrian state television carried an appeal from the governor of Hasakeh province, where Qamishli is located, urging residents to “go to public and private hospitals to donate blood for the victims of the terrorist bombings”.

In Aleppo city, at least 16 people were killed on Wednesday in government air strikes and artillery fire on rebel-held neighbourhoods in the east of the city. The casualties were civilians and the death toll could well rise as some remain trapped under the rubble in some places, according to the Syrian observatory which monitors the fighting and casualties.

The Syrian army, meanwhile, officially announced it had severed “all the supply routes and crossings used by terrorists to bring mercenaries, weapons and ammunition into eastern neighbourhoods of Aleppo”.

The war in Syria has so far claimed more 280,000 lives.

* Agence France-Presse