A view shows the wreckage after a car bomb exploded in Qamishli city, northeast Syria, yesterday.
DAMASCUS: A suicide car bomb rocked the Kurdish city of Qamishli yesterday, state television said, in the first such attack in Syria’s Kurdish region which has kept out of the conflict between rebels and the regime.
Government forces and rebels, meanwhile, pressed on with the battle for the northern city of Aleppo — the main battleground since July of Syria’s 18-month conflict.
The broadcaster said at least four people were killed in the Qamishli blast, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said eight members of the security forces were killed and that the attack targeted their headquarters in the city.
“A suicide terrorist using a car laden with explosives attacked the western district of Qamishli,” the television said.
The Britain-based Observatory said “at least eight members of the security forces were killed, and 15 were injured,” adding that the blast was followed by heavy gunfire.
The Qamishli attack comes less than a week after a twin bomb attack struck the heavily-guarded Syrian army headquarters in the heart of Damascus, killing at least four of its guards. An Islamist rebel group claimed the Damascus attack.
Yesterday’s bombing was the first time since the outbreak of the anti-regime revolt that Qamishli witnessed such a violent attack, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.
“The earth shook beneath us, the force of the explosion was immense,” an activist who identified himself as Serdar said via the Internet.
Abdel Rahman said the military pulled out of Kurdish regions in northeastern Syria, including Qamishli, several months ago and the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) had no presence in the city, although some other fighters are based there.
The Qamishli blast came as intense fighting swept Syria’s second city Aleppo after a night of heavy shelling that destroyed houses and killed at least three people, including two civilians, said the Observatory.
Large parts of Aleppo’s covered market, the largest of its kind in the world and a Unesco world heritage site that traces its history back to the 14th century, have been reduced to ashes as government forces and rebels fight for control of the city.
The historic market was largely undamaged by earlier fighting in Syria’s largest city, but in the early hours of Saturday some of its shops caught fire during clashes in circumstances that remain unclear.
The flames spread rapidly, partly because many of the small retail units tucked beneath the market’s ancient arches were full of fabric, and have now ravaged at least 1,500 shops and are still burning, activists said.
“It is not only the souq that is burning, my heart is burning as well,” said an anti-government activist called Hashem who learnt the craft of jewellery-making in the souq before the revolt erupted last year.
Aleppo’s old city is one of several places that Unesco, the United Nations cultural agency, has designated world heritage sites and which are now at risk.
The army, for its part, shelled several other districts of Aleppo and battled rebels in Aleppo’s northern district of Jandul, the Observatory said. “There were many rebels and soldiers killed, but both sides are trying to conceal their casualties,” Abdel Rahman said.
In Damascus province, rebels killed nine soldiers when they attacked a military checkpoint on the road linking the capital with Qatana to the southwest, the Observatory reported.
Four people were also killed in the town of Irbin in Damascus province, the Observatory said.
