A human rights group said a senior commander from the security forces in northeast Syria’s semi-autonomous, Kurdish-led administration was killed on Tuesday in a blast near a prison in Hasakeh province, Agence France-Presse reported.
“A commander in the Kurdish security forces was killed and another person was wounded” in an explosion near the prison in Umm Fursan on the outskirts of the city of Qamishli “at the same time that a Turkish drone was flying in the area,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The commander in the Asayish security forces had played “a prominent role in leading military operations against the Islamic State group [Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, ISIL] in Raqa province,” a former bastion of the jihadists in Syria, said the Britain-based observatory.
Asayish said in a statement that one of its “leadership comrades” was killed in Qamishli after a Turkish army drone targeted its vehicles at a detention center in Umm Fursan.
The Turkish defense ministry told AFP it had no information about the attack.
A local Kurdish news agency reported “the sound of an explosion … resulting from the targeting of a car” in the area.
The incident came a day after Syria’s Kurdish authorities in Hasakeh province released 50 Syrian prisoners accused of belonging to ISIL as part of a general amnesty deal, an official had told AFP.
The Kurds have established a semi-autonomous administration spanning swaths of north and northeast Syria.
The US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces spearheaded the battle that dislodged ISIL jihadists from their last scraps of Syrian territory in 2019.
Turkey sees the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which dominates the SDF, as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it considers a terrorist group.
The Turkish army, which has troops and proxies in northern Syria, regularly carries out strikes in Kurdish-held areas.
Turkey assumed control of two large strips of territory along the border after expelling Kurdish forces in successive campaigns.