Bomb blast in a bus kills 3 civilians in Syria's Afrin: monitor

A bomb blast in a bus killed three civilians Sunday in the northern Syrian city of Afrin on the first anniversary of a Turkish attack on the Kurdish-majority region, a war monitor said.

Turkish troops and allied rebels groups seized the northern Syrian city of Afrin in March 2018 after a two-month air and ground offensive against the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units dubbed operation "Olive Branch"

Nine other people, including fighters, were wounded in the explosion, the head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP.

Turkish troops and allied rebel groups seized the Afrin region from Kurdish forces in March last year after a two-month air and ground offensive.

"The explosion is the result of a bomb that was placed in a bus in the centre of Afrin," Abdel Rahman said.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the blast, the second to rock Afrin since December 16 when a car bomb killed at least nine people, including five civilians, near a pro-Turkey rebel post in the city.

That explosion came after Turkish President Recep Tayyib Erdogan threatened to launch a new offensive against the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in Syria.

Turkey accuses the YPG of being "terrorists", but the Kurdish militia also forms the backbone of a US-backed alliance fighting the Islamic State group in Syria.