At least eight people were killed and 23 others wounded when a car bomb exploded in the middle of a popular market in Aleppo province’s Azaz said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Britain-based Observatory, which has a network of sources inside Syria, said the blast caused significant damage and sparked a fire.

An AFP correspondent saw emergency responders working at the scene and the remains of a mangled vehicle.

The war has killed more than 507,000 people, displaced millions and battered the country’s infrastructure and industry.

Turkey has launched successive military offensives in Syria, most of them targeting Kurdish militants that Ankara links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.

Turkish troops and their Syrian proxies hold swathes of the border, including several major cities and towns such as Azaz.