At Least 19 Killed in NW Syrian Truck Bomb of al-Bab

Scores wounded in attack on Turkish-held town

A truck bombing hit a bus station in the Turkish-controlled town of al-Bab Tuesday, in northwestern Syria. The bomb killed at least 19 people and wounded 75 others, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The White Helmets said the number of casualties would increase.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, but ISIS had previously controlled al-Bab and might be trying to reassert itself. Turkey will likely prefer to blame the Kurds, though for now everyone is withholding judgement.

This area is just northeast of Aleppo, and that part of Syria has long been insecure.  Al-Bab itself has faced several attacks since Turkey took it over in 2017, expelling ISIS from one of its most far-west territories.

The UN was critical of the bombing, calling it an indiscriminate attack on civilians. That tends to be how attacks in far northern Syria go, as it is rare for combat forces to be targeted in these attacks, which generally focus on gatherings of large numbers of potential casualties.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.