16 dead, 30 wounded in three blasts in northeast Syria: Monitor

QAMISHLI

Residents inspect damage from a suicide bomb in Qamishli, Syria December 30, 2015. Twin suicide bombings hit two restaurants in a Kurdish-controlled city in northeastern Syria on Wednesday, killing or wounding dozens of people, a Kurdish official and a group monitoring the war said. REUTERS/Rodi Said

At least 16 people were killed and 30 wounded by explosions in three restaurants in the northeast of Syria on Dec. 30, a monitoring group said, in attacks claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

At least one of the blasts in the city of Qamishli, which is close to the border with Turkey, was caused by a suicide bomber, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP.

An AFP correspondent in the city said the suicide attack took place in a restaurant in a Christian neighborhood.

“Three explosions, one by a suicide bomber inside a restaurant, hit... Qamishli city in Hasakeh province,” the Observatory’s director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

Syria’s state news agency, SANA, said that two “terrorist explosions” had gone off in Qamishli, killing 16 people and wounding 35, the Associated Press reported.

News agency Amaq, which supports ISIL jihadists, said the group had claimed responsibility for the attacks on the city, which lies near the border with Turkey and close to Iraq.

“Dozens of dead and wounded in the bombings by the fighters of ISIL in different parts of Qamishli city,” it said.

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 northeast Syria.

Syrian troops and seasoned Kurdish fighters have coordinated on security in Hasakeh province where ISIL jihadists have tried to advance.

According to the Observatory, all three of the restaurant explosions happened in a zone controlled by regime forces.