Deadly car bombing hits Turkey convoy in north Syria: monitor

BEIRUT: A deadly car bomb targeted a Turkish convoy in an area of northern Syria controlled by Turkey-backed fighters on Wednesday, a Britain-based war monitor said.

The blast hit a convoy of Turkish troops headed towards a military base west of the town of Jarabulus in the northern province of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The monitoring group did not give a precise death toll, and there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing.

Ankara-led forces on October 9 launched a cross-border incursion against Kurdish fighters several hundreds of kilometres to the east of Jarabulus, taking control of a 120-kilometre (70-mile) long strip of land along Turkey’s southern frontier.

A US-backed Kurdish-led military campaign expelled the Islamic State group from their last patch of territory in Syria in March, but the jihadists have continued to claim deadly attacks ever since.

Syria‘s civil war has killed more than 370,000 people since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.