Car bomb kills 20 in northern Syria, deadliest since Assad toppled

DAMASCUS (Reuters) -A car bomb killed at least 20 people in the northern Syrian city of Manbij on Monday, the Syrian presidency said, marking the second attack there in three days and the country's deadliest since Bashar al-Assad was toppled from power in December.

The presidency's statement said it will hold the perpetrators of what it described as a "terror attack" accountable.

"This crime will not pass without the most severe punishment against its perpetrators to serve as an example against those who will try to tamper with the security of Syria or harm its people," the presidency said.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attack in Manbij, located some 30 km (19 miles) from the Turkish border. At least 14 of the dead were women, according to a preliminary toll issued earlier by the civil defence rescue service and another 15 women were wounded.

The victims were agricultural workers and the death toll was likely to increase, a civil defence official told Reuters.

Manbij has changed hands numerous times during Syria's 13-year civil war, most recently in December when Turkish-backed groups captured it from the U.S.-backed SDF, which is led by the Kurdish YPG militia.

The SDF had taken Manbij from Islamic State militants in 2016.

On Saturday, a car bomb in Manbij killed four civilians and wounded nine others, including children, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported.

Assad was ousted from power on Dec. 8 after a lightning offensive by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, whose leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was declared Syria's transitional president last week.

(Reporting by Clauda Tanios, Jana Choukeir, Nayera Abdallah in Dubai, Kinda Makieh and Khalil Ashawi in Damascus; Jaidaa Taha and Menna Alaa El-Din in Cairo; writing by Clauda Tanios and Tom Perry; editing by Toby Chopra, Bernadette Baum, Alex Richardson, Mark Heinrich and Sharon Singleton)