ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - An official affiliated with the Kurdish autonomous administration in Syria was killed in an explosion in Aleppo, local sources reported on Friday. At least two other people were injured.
A booby-trapped car exploded killing an unnamed member of the Economic Committee in Aleppo’s Kurdish enclave of Sheikh Maqsoud, Hawar News Agency (ANHA), a news outlet affiliated with the Kurdish administration in northeast Syria (Rojava), reported, citing an unnamed security source.
The source accused Turkey of carrying out the bombing and added that two other people were injured in the blast.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), three people were injured, in addition to the official who was killed.
Ankara has not immediately commented on the incident.
Rojava officials have accused Turkey of carrying out two separate deadly drone attacks in Kobane and Qamishli this month, despite dealing with a catastrophic natural disaster.
A destructive 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the Kurdish city of Kahramanmaras in Turkey on February 6, with its impact also ripping through neighboring Syria. Several other quakes and thousands of aftershocks have occurred since then, killing some 50,000 in both countries.
Farhad Shami, media chief for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said in a tweet on Wednesday that "in a time when the world is busy helping those affected by earthquake[s] in Turkey & Syria, the Turkish occupation is escalating against our region."
Ankara considers the People's Protection Units (YPG), the backbone of the SDF, as the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an armed group struggling for the greater rights of Kurds in Turkey. Turkey has listed both PKK and YPG as terrorist organizations.
