Car bomb explodes in northeast Syria killing 16 people, including three Turkish soldiers

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) has reported an attack on a checkpoint in the town of Ras al-Ain, located on the Syrian-Turkish border. Sixteen people were killed in the attack, including three Turkish soldiers, two civilians, and 11 members of the police and the Syrian faction Sultan Murad. At least twelve civilians were also injured as well as eight Turkish soldiers.   

In a statement, the authorities of Sanliurfa, a Turkish province on the border with Syria, hold the Kurdish militias of the YPG (People's Protection Units), which Turkey considers as a branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), responsible. However, so far nobody has assumed the responsibility for the attack.   

Ras al-Ain and its surroundings are controlled by Ankara since the offensive launched in the northeast of Syria in October 2019, aiming at driving the YPG out of the border areas. The operation led Turkey to control a strip of territory 120 km long and 30 km wide, stretching from the aforementioned city to Tal Abyad. Since then, attacks in the region have been frequent.  

When the Syrian Civil War began in 2011, Damascus' troops progressively abandoned this region, leaving the north and east of the country in the hands of the Kurdish authorities, historic enemies of the ruling Ba'ath Party. The aspiration of the Kurds was to have at least one autonomous region.  

In the context of the fight against the Islamic state, the Kurdish alliance known as the Democratic Syrian Forces (DSF) became the United States' main ally in the fight against the terrorist group. This fight culminated on 23 March 2019 with the organisation's defeat in its last fiefdom in the province of Deir al Zur, on the border with Iraq.   

On 6 October 2019, US President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of the troops that had been supporting the Kurds in the Syrian northeast. Almost immediately, three days later, Turkey started the invasion of this area by launching several air raids on several border cities.   

The Operation Fountain of Peace was the third Turkish incursion into northeast Syria since 2016. The reason given by Turkey was to establish a "safe zone" along the border and to control it exclusively. In this strip, they planned to settle two million of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey at that time. This operation was supported by some Syrian rebel factions against the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.  

The rest of the Syrian north was occupied after the Operation Euphrates Shield, which was launched in 2016 and ensured Turkey the control of the area extended from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, and the Operation Olive Branch in the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in 2018.   

Since then, Turkish attacks and casualties in the area have been frequent. The city of Ras al-Ain itself has recently been the scene of attacks against Turkish soldiers and their Syrian allies. On July 23 this year, four people were killed and several tens were injured by another car bomb attack. Only three days later, a bomb placed on a motorbike caused the death of 8 people, among them a child, and 19 injured, some of them seriously.  

Other cities, such as the aforementioned Afrin, were also the scene of attacks. Last April a bomb placed in a tanker truck left forty people dead, including civilians and soldiers, including eleven children. The fuel truck was detonated in a market. Immediately the Turkish Ministry of Defence accused the YPG, like in today's attack, of being responsible.   

The fighting in the region of Idlib also caused numerous casualties in the Turkish army at the beginning of the year, especially at the end of February, when 33 Turkish soldiers were killed by the Syrian government troops in a bloody battle in the mentioned north-western Syrian province.