The governor’s office of Turkey’s southern Şanlıurfa province has blamed Kurdish militants for a car bomb that killed four at a checkpoint on Thursday, including one Turkish gendarme, The Associated Press reported.
The blast occurred on the road leading to the Syrian town of Ras al-Ayn Thursday afternoon, a statement from the governor’s office said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said the explosion killed five, including three Turkish-backed opposition fighters and two members of Turkey’s gendarmerie.
The governor’s office said 10 others were wounded, including seven civilians, who were being treated in the Turkish border village of Ceylanpınar. They were all in stable condition, it said.
Turkey has blamed explosions that killed and wounded dozens of people in northeast Syria in recent months on Kurdish fighters.
Ankara views the Kurdish fighters as terrorists for their links to a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey. The Kurdish fighters had, however, partnered with the US against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terror group.