Nine killed in three blasts in northeast Syria: Monitor

Beirut: At least nine people were killed and more than 25 injured when explosions struck three restaurants in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli, a monitoring group said.

At least one of the blasts was caused by a suicide bomber, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP yesterday.

An AFP correspondent in the city said the suicide attack took place in a restaurant in a Christian neighbourhood.

"Three explosions, one by a suicide bomber inside a restaurant, hit... Qamishli city in Hasakeh province," the Observatory's director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

"At least 9 persons were killed and more than 25 injured." Qamishli, near the border with Turkey and close to Iraq, is under the shared control of the Syrian regime and Kurdish authorities, who have declared zones of "autonomous administration" across parts of north and northeast Syria.

Syrian troops and seasoned Kurdish fighters have coordinated on security in Hasakeh province where Islamic State group jihadists have tried to advance.

According to the Observatory, all three of the restaurant explosions happened in a zone controlled by regime forces.