The explosion was near a base for Kurdish security forces, who have been fighting the militant group.
Advertisement
State news agency SANA said the rescue teams were still removing bodies from under the rubble.
Kurdish forces control the city but forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad retain a presence there and at its airport. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.
Isis said it had carried out the attack in Qamishli, describing it as a truck bombing that had struck a complex of Kurdish offices.
As Reuters reports, “Kurdish forces control much of Hasaka province, after capturing vast areas from the jihadist group a year ago”.
The explosion was set off at a Kurdish security facility in a town along Syria’s northern border with Turkey.
AT least 44 people were killed and dozens injured in the deadliest bomb blast to hit the Kurdish-majority Syrian city of Qamishli since the country’s war began. State television said that one of the blasts was a vehicle bomb and the other blast was a motorbike bomb, Reuters reported. Footage of the blast showed a gray cloud of smoke rising from near buildings with their exterior walls blown out, cars on fire, and people running.
One explosion was so powerful it shattered the windows of shops in the Turkish town of Nusaybin, directly across the border. Minutes later, a motorcycle, also packed with explosives, blew off in the same area.
The Qamishli resident Suleiman Youssef, a writer, said he had heard the first explosion from a few miles away. He said the blasts leveled several buildings to the ground and many people were trapped under the rubble.
Earlier this month, the deadliest terror attack in Baghdad in years killed almost 300 people when a suicide truck bomb plowed into a busy shopping district. In April, a suicide blast killed six members of the Kurdish internal security forces.
Advertisement
Last year, a US-backed alliance led by Kurdish fighters, the Syrian Democratic Forces launched an offensive against IS in Hassakeh. Two people were slightly hurt in Nusaybin, said one witness.
