The militant team calling alone Islamic State on Friday took accountability for triple suicide bombings that killed at minimum 60 individuals in a Syrian town controlled by U.S.-backed Kurdish militiamen who have been battling the Sunni extremist team.
The assaults Thursday evening on the city of Tal Tamr included three explosive-packed vehicles driven by suicide bombers, in accordance to an Islamic Point out statement distributed online.
Islamic Point out stated it had specific bases of the Syrian Kurdish militia recognized as the People’s Safety Models, or YPG, a U.S. ground partner in the battle from Islamic State.
A spokesman for the YPG could not quickly be attained for remark the assaults or the demise toll.
Regional activists and the U.K.-based mostly opposition checking group Syrian Observatory for Human Legal rights explained at the very least 26 individuals have been confirmed useless and dozens remained lacking. They stated at least one hundred twenty other folks experienced been wounded.
The U.S. has since very last year provided the YPG with weapons and ammunition and has shared intelligence and supported its floor operations with in depth airstrikes.
Washington stated in Oct that it was sending some 50 U.S. specific operations troops to the region to support the Kurdish militia and fighters allied to it.
Tal Tamr is portion of a semiautonomous zone in northeast Syria ruled by the Kurds but also is property to teams which includes Arabs and Assyrian Christians.
Even now, Thursday’s bombings underline Islamic State’s ability to execute huge-scale assaults in Kurdish-majority areas of northeastern Syria, regardless of hefty stress from airstrikes carried out by the U.S. and its Western allies, as effectively as by a individual Russian marketing campaign.
The suicide bombings arrive following YPG fighters had recaptured numerous essential locations in the spot from Islamic Condition more than the previous calendar year. Hoger Ibrahim, an opposition activist in Tal Tamr, stated bodies have been even now getting pulled out from the rubble late on Friday.
Amongst the attackers’ targets had been a overall health clinic and a vegetable market place in the predominantly Assyrian Christian town, which located about sixty miles from Qamishli, the primary Kurdish-managed city in northeast Syria.
The assaults on Tal Tamr ended up carried out 1 working day right after Islamic Condition released 25 Assyrian Christians held hostage because February. That thirty day period, Islamic Point out attacked many Christian villages in close proximity to Tal Tamr in the region known as the Khabur. During that rampage, residences have been set ablaze, churches blown up and a lot more than 250 men and women kidnapped which includes girls and kids, citizens explained.
YPG and Assyrian fighters later managed to recapture the area.
—Sam Dagher contributed to this report.
Write to Dana Ballout at dana.ballout@wsj.com
