BEIRUT, Sept 19: A booby-trapped motorbike exploded in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli on Monday, killing a child and wounding six other people, the monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

Syrian state TV said a motorbike had exploded and reported that four people were wounded but did not immediately mention deaths.

Qamishli is in an area mostly under the control of Kurdish security forces. Bomb blasts, often claimed by Islamic State, have occurred in Qamishli and nearby Hasaka city, both under Kurdish control, but have been rare in the last year.

Islamic State also reported the bombing via its online Amaq news agency, saying it had targeted a vehicle belonging to Kurdish security forces. It did not explicitly claim the attack.

Kurdish internal security force the Asayish, in a statement, blamed a Syrian government-allied paramilitary group for carrying out the attack.

The Kurdish YPG militia is spearheading a U.S.-backed offensive to drive Islamic State out of the jihadist group’s remaining strongholds in eastern Syria, including its former de facto Syrian capital, Raqqa.

The YPG and Syrian government forces have mostly stayed out of each other’s way in the six-year-old Syrian conflict.

 
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