Sixteen people were killed and thirty wounded on Wednesday evening when three explosions, including one suicide bombing, targeted three restaurants in government-controlled neighborhoods of Qamishli in northeastern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Amaq News Agency, associated with ISIS, reported that the group’s fighters carried out the attacks.
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said at least sixteen people had died and more than thirty were injured in the three bombings in Qamishli, Hasakah province.
An initial Observatory toll had listed nine dead and twenty-five wounded.
The attacks struck three well-known, crowded restaurants on the eve of New Year celebrations. A suicide bomber entered one in the predominantly Christian Al-Wusta area and detonated his explosives.
The second explosion hit another restaurant on an upscale tourist street in the same area.
The Observatory said all three restaurants were in an area controlled by government forces, which shared control of the city with Kurdish forces.
Two weeks earlier, tensions between the sides developed after a government-force member attacked a Kurdish police vehicle, leading to gunfire and a security alert.