At least 22 people area dead after an Isis suicide bomber targeted a Kurdish wedding party in northeast Syria, a monitor has said.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of contacts across the country, revised the death toll from Monday’s attack in Hasekeh province up from 12 to 22. Dozens of people were wounded, Rami Abdulrahman of SOHR said. Kurdish media put the numebr of wounded at 47.
The ceremony in the Kurdish-controlled village of al-Tal was for a member of the mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an umbrella group which has been fighting Isis in the north of the country. The groom was reported as among the dead.
Isis claimed responsibility for the incident online across several social media accounts with a statement which said a militant ambushed the Kurdish party inside a hall with a machine gun, and after running out of ammunition used a suicide vest on the “PKK [Kurdish Workers’ Party] apostates."
Graphic video from Kurdish news sites purportedly showing the aftermath of the attack show broken glass and concrete everywhere. The floor of the hall is covered in blood.
Isis previously attacked a wedding party in Gaziantep in the Kurdish region of Turkey in August. 54 people died in the blast, which President Recep Erdogan said was carried out by a child aged between 12-14, although Isis did not claim responsibility.
The terror group has lost swathes of its territory on the Turkish/Syrian border to advances by Kurdish and Turkish-backed Syrian rebels since Turkey launched Operation Euphrates on August 24th.
Free Syrian Army groups are currently advancing on Dabiq, a village in northwest Syria of extreme ideological importance to Isis. Losing control of Dabiq would be a significant morale blow to the group.
