Islamic State says it's behind attack that killed 44 in northern Syria

By Nabih Bulos

July 27, 2016 4:25 PM PT

Reporting from Amman, Jordan — A massive car bomb Wednesday struck the Kurdish-controlled city of Qamishli in northeastern Syria, killing at least 44 people and wounding hundreds in what was seen as a vengeance attack by Islamic State, officials and Syrian state media reported.

Carried aboard a large truck, the bomb detonated a little after 9 a.m. near a center for the Asayesh, the local Kurdish police, as well as several governmental buildings, according to Canaan Barakat, interior minister of the Syrian Kurdish regional administration in Qamishli.

Activists said the blast destroyed 30 stores and at least 15 homes in an area that is also a vibrant residential and commercial district.

“There were children and women… they were in the market, and the bomb targeted commercial areas,” Barakat said in a phone interview Wednesday.

Shrapnel from the blast struck a fuel tank more than 400 feet away, triggering a second explosion that initially was mistaken for another suicide bomb attack.

Amaq, a news agency affiliated with Islamic State, reported that the extremist group had claimed the attack, which it said targeted “the headquarters of the Kurdish units in the city.” It also claimed more than 100 people had been killed. The group often inflates casualty numbers in its statements.

Photographs published by Syrian state news outlet SANA showed a swath of buildings devastated by the blast, with crowds converging to help the wounded.

Video from the area showed a woman running to the site of the explosion, her screams mingling with the sounds of an ambulance’s siren. In front of her, thick black smoke obscures the carnage. The video then shows a man throwing pieces of masonry aside where, several feet away, a woman’s leg can be seen poking from the rubble.

Activists on a Facebook community page in Qamishli said the social media platform had activated its “Safety Check” for the city, a feature that allows users in the vicinity to assure others they are unhurt.

Qamishli, located at the northeastern tip of Syria, 420 miles east of Damascus, the capital, and only miles from the Turkish border, has emerged as an important focal point for Syria’s Kurdish population. Although the city is a polyethnic mix of Kurds, Arabs, Assyrian/Syrian Christians and Armenians, it has become the de facto capital of Rojava, a self-governing Kurdish canton.

As the government’s hold on Syria’s northern region has faltered during the five-year civil war, other groups, including the Kurds, have raced to fill the vacuum. It has transformed Syrian territories along the 500-mile Turkish border into a tapestry of armed factions fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad (and occasionally each other), the Kurds and the government.

Yet Qamishli remains nominally under state control; Syrian troops maintain a tenuous presence alongside members of the People’s Protection Units, a Syrian Kurdish militia also known as the YPG. Although the government does not recognize Kurdish autonomy, it has nonetheless tolerated — and occasionally cooperates with — the YPG as it wrestles with the rebels elsewhere in the country.

Wednesday’s blast, the largest to hit Qamishli, comes as the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition composed of both rebels and YPG militia fighters, are mounting a large-scale offensive to take the city of Manbij. Located roughly 200 miles to the east, it is a vital passageway in and out of neighboring Turkey for Islamic State fighters.

Barakat said the attack was meant as a message from Islamic State, even as the group loses territories throughout its self-proclaimed caliphate and struggles to maintain its hold over Manbij.

“They want to have vengeance because of their losses against YPG and the Syrian Democratic Forces,” he said.

“Since they can’t fight our troops on the battlefield, they’re now targeting civilian areas to divert our attention.”

Separately, the Syrian army said its forces had completed a lockdown on rebel-held areas of Aleppo, a city divided between the loyalists in the western neighborhoods and the opposition to the east.

A statement Wednesday from the general command of the army said pro-government troops and allied forces had “cut off all supply routes and passageways that the terrorists use to bring in the mercenaries, arms and ammunition to the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo.”

The government routinely describes the opposition fighting to remove Assad from power as “terrorists” or “mercenaries.”

It touted the achievement as part of a “plan to restore security and stability to the city of Aleppo.”

Fighting has intensified in the northern countryside areas of Aleppo, as the rebels engage in increasingly desperate attacks to regain access to the Castello Road, a highway that serves as the main supply artery into opposition areas of Aleppo.

Last week, the government and pro-opposition activists said the road was now under the army’s “fire control,” in effect stopping any movement in and out of rebel-held parts of the city.

The government offensive, which has been supported by Russian airstrikes and ground troops from Iraq, Iran and Lebanon, appears to be an all-out push to retake Aleppo. The city, Syria’s largest and the onetime heart of its economic prowess, is considered to be an essential prize that is the key to controlling the country’s north.

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UPDATES:

4:29 p.m.: This article has been updated with Syrian army claims that it has completed a lockdown on rebel-held areas of Aleppo.

12:45 p.m.: This article has been updated with staff reporting.

This post was originally published at 4:50 a.m.