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Explosion hits Kurdish police headquarters in Qamishli

Amman- A car bomb rocked downtown Qamishli on Monday afternoon, targeting a local Asayish station, the police force of the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration, according to local sources who spoke to Syria Direct.


Amman– A car bomb rocked downtown Qamishli on Monday afternoon, targeting a local Asayish station, the police force of the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration, according to local sources who spoke to Syria Direct.

“The operation was carried out by five people in a white van,” an Asayish employee told Syria Direct from Qamishli, the capital of the Autonomous Administration of northeast Syria. The source spoke under condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give statements to the media: “They attempted to enter the internal security forces’ building.”

“The surveillance cameras observed some strange movement in the area, and after the failure of the operation [the attempt to enter the building], the attackers were forced to blow up the car outside of the building,” the source added.

“Two of the attackers were arrested, two fled, and one was killed.”

The attack occurred in the Sony traffic circle downtown, in front of the traffic department of the Asayish and opposite the headquarters of the Asayish leadership, Rani Shaker, an independent journalist located in Qamishli, told Syria Direct. A local media outlet later confirmed Shaker’s account.

Open source reports indicated there were at least seven injured civilians, and local sources confirmed that account to Syria Direct, adding that a young girl was among the injured.

For their part, the Asayish said there were no casualties as a result of the blast.

No party had claimed responsibility for the attack at the time of publication.

However, IS has conducted numerous assassinations of local officials after losing its last Syrian territory in the town of Baghuz in March of this year, in addition to planting roadside bombs across eastern Syria.

According to Mazlum Kobane, the general of the Syrian Democratic Forces, though IS’s caliphate no longer occupies territory, Syria still faces major security challenges from the extremist organization including the presence of sleeper cells, bombs, and assassinations.

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