At least 16 people have been killed and 30 injured in three blasts in a Kurdish-controlled city in Syria, a monitoring group has said.

The attacks targeted restaurants in Qamishli, near the border with Turkey, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

At least one of the blasts was a suicide attack, the Observatory said.

The Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group has said it was behind several attacks in Kurdish areas in recent weeks.
“Three explosions, one by a suicide bomber inside a restaurant, hit Qamishli city in Hasakeh province,” SOHR director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP news agency.

An IS-linked news agency, Amaq, said the group carried out the bombings.

Qamishli, in Syria’s north-east, serves as a base for the YPG – a Kurdish militia fighting against IS.
The city is under shared control of YPG and regime forces. According to the SOHR, all three explosions happened in a zone controlled by the government.

The YPG is working in conjunction with the US-led air offensive against IS. In October, the militia joined a new US-backed ground alliance, the Democratic Forces of Syria.

The alliance launched an offensive against IS in the north-eastern province of Hasaka that month, while Kurdish forces in Iraq seized the town of Sinjar from the jihadist group.