A massive tanker truck bomb ripped through a market by a courthouse in the opposition-held Syrian town of Azaz on Saturday (January 7th), killing 48 people and wounding dozens near the Turkish border, AFP reported.
At least 14 opposition fighters were among the dead, but most of those killed were civilians, including five religious judges belonging to various opposition factions, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said identification of the dead was being hampered as some bodies were completely burned in the blast.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Saturday's attack, but Osama al-Merhi, a lawyer at the scene of the blast, blamed the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL).
"These kinds of crimes are only committed by the terrorist group ISIL," he said. "They are the ones who target civilians and the cadres who are building this country."
