Car bomb kills four in Syria’s Azaz

By Halit Suleyman, Mohamad Misto and Adham Kako

AZAZ, Syria (AA) - Four people were killed -- and at least four others injured -- when a car bomb rocked Syria’s northern city of Azaz on Wednesday.

According to an Anadolu Agency correspondent near the scene of the attack, an explosive-laden vehicle exploded outside Azaz’s Maytam Mosque near an office associated with Syria’s pro-opposition interim government.

Dr. Hassan Ubeid, who works at a local field hospital, told Anadolu Agency that four people had been killed by the blast -- including one Free Syrian Police officer -- and four civilian residents injured.

Interim government head Jawad Abu Hatab, for his part, told Anadolu Agency that he had been in Azaz when the bombing occurred.

“There had been a scheduled meeting [of interim government officials] in Azaz, but the venue was changed due to security concerns,” Abu Hatab said, noting that the interim government office had not been damaged by the attack.

The same office had come under attack two months ago, he added, while refraining from saying who had attacked it.

Abu Hatab went on to say that an interim government minister -- along with 10 other people -- had been killed in an earlier attack by the Daesh terrorist group on an interim government office in the city of Daraa, while another interim government office in Idlib had been targeted by Russian airstrikes.

Syria has remained locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

Several rounds of subsequent peace talks -- in both Geneva and Kazakh capital Astana -- have failed to end the conflict, in which hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians are believed to have been killed to date.