Fuel truck explodes in front of courthouse in Azaz, and news agency says car bomb planted by Islamic State was responsible

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A fuel truck has exploded in the centre of a rebel-held town near Syria’s border with Turkey, killing dozens of people. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 48 people, mostly civilians, were killed when the tanker blew up in front of a courthouse in the northern Syrian town of Azaz. In unsourced comments, Turkey's privately-owned Dogan news agency said a car bomb planted by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was responsible. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Saturday's attack, but Osama al-Merhi, a lawyer at the scene of the blast, pointed the finger at Daesh. “They are the ones who target civilians and the cadres who are building this country.”

Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency cited a doctor in Azaz as saying that at least 60 people had been killed and more than 50 wounded. Syria’s nearly six-year war has create a patchwork of areas of control across the country.Azaz is a stronghold of the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), an alliance of moderate rebel groups whose fighters have, with Turkish military support, pushed Islamic State militants out of the border area. The U.K.-based activist group says the explosion was caused by a fuel tanker rigged with a bomb, which went off outside a courthouse in the rebel-held town on Syria's border with Turkey.
A fuel truck explodes in the Syrian town of Azaz, near the border with Turkey, killing at least 43 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.