Car bomb kills 15 in northern Syria

A car bomb on Monday killed 15 people, mostly women farm workers, in the northern Syrian city of Manbij where Kurdish forces are battling Turkey-backed groups, state media reported.

Citing White Helmet rescuers, SANA news agency said there had been a "massacre" on a local road, with "the explosion of a car bomb near a vehicle transporting agricultural workers" killing 14 women and one man.

The attack also wounded 15 women, some critically, SANA said, adding the toll could rise.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

It was the second such attack in recent days in war-ravaged Syria, where Islamist-led rebels toppled autocratic president Bashar al-Assad in December.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor reported nine people, including an unspecified number of pro-Turkey fighters, killed Saturday "when a car bomb exploded near a military position" in Manbij.

Turkey-backed forces in Syria's north launched an offensive against the Kurdish-led, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in November, capturing several Kurdish-held enclaves in the north despite US efforts to broker a ceasefire.

With US support, the SDF spearheaded the military campaign that ousted the Islamic State jihadist group from Syria in 2019.

But Turkey accuses the main component of the group -- the People's Protection Units (YPG) -- of being affiliated with the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Both Turkey and the United States have designated the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil, a terrorist group.

Syria's new rulers have called on the SDF to hand over their weapons, rejecting demands for any kind of Kurdish self-rule.

Assad ruled Syria with an iron fist and his bloody crackdown down on anti-government protests in 2011 sparked a war that killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.