Car bomb kills 15 in northern Syria, deadliest since Assad toppled

DAMASCUS: A car bomb killed at least 15 people in the Syrian city of Manbij on Monday, the second attack there in three days and Syria's deadliest since Bashar al-Assad was toppled from power in December.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attack in Manbij, located some 30 km (19 miles) from the Turkish border. The civil defence rescue service identified the dead as 14 women and one man, and said another 15 women were wounded.

The victims were agricultural workers and the death toll was likely to increase, a civil defence official told Reuters.

Manbij has changed hands numerous times during the Syrian war, most recently in December when Turkey-backed groups captured it from the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is led by the Kurdish YPG militia.

The SDF had captured Manbij from Islamic State in 2016.

On Saturday, a car bomb in Manbij killed four civilians and wounded nine others, including children, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported.

Assad was toppled from power on Dec. 8, following a lightning offensive by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, whose leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was declared Syria's transitional president last week.