{"id":25780,"date":"2018-12-16T19:22:13","date_gmt":"2018-12-16T19:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25780"},"modified":"2018-12-16T19:22:13","modified_gmt":"2018-12-16T19:22:13","slug":"blast-kills-four-in-syrias-afrin-held-by-turkey-backed-rebels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25780","title":{"rendered":"Blast kills four in Syria’s Afrin held by Turkey-backed rebels"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A car bomb has killed at least four people and wounded 20 others in the northern Syrian city of Afrin, held by pro-Turkey rebels, the Turkish state-run Anadolu news agency said.<\/p>\n

The explosion on Sunday came after Turkish President Recep Tayyip\u00a0Erdogan threatened\u00a0earlier this week\u00a0to launch a new offensive<\/a> against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria<\/a> “in a few days”.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the UK-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said eight people – four civilians and four fighters –\u00a0<\/span>were killed, with activist-operated Shaam news agency reporting the same death toll.<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear who was behind the blast.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rebel forces backed by the Turkish army seized Afrin from the YPG<\/a> in early\u00a02018 in their second large-scale operation into northern Syria since 2016.<\/p>\n

Turkey accuses the YPG of being terrorists. However, the armed group is the backbone of a US-backed alliance fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL<\/a>, also known as ISIS) group in Syria.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The YPG, as well as US forces, are currently present in areas along the Turkish border to the east of Afrin.<\/p>\n

Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said the car bomb, which exploded “near a position of pro-Turkey fighters” in a market, wounded dozens.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Friday, US President Donald Trump agreed with Erdogan for a “more effective coordination” between them in the war-torn country.<\/p>\n

Erdogan has strongly criticised Washington’s support for the YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces fighting ISIL in their last holdout in the far east of the country.<\/p>\n

The US military has set up observation posts in the region in an effort to prevent friction between its NATO ally and the Syrian Kurdish forces.<\/p>\n

Syria’s war has killed more than 360,000 people and displaced millions since starting in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests. <\/span><\/p>\n

It has since spiralled into a complex conflict and a proxy war involving armed groups and world powers.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A car bomb has killed at least four people and wounded 20 others in the northern Syrian city of Afrin, held by pro-Turkey rebels, the Turkish state-run Anadolu news agency said. The explosion on Sunday came after Turkish President Recep Tayyip\u00a0Erdogan threatened\u00a0earlier this week\u00a0to launch a new offensive against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":25781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}