QAMISHLI: At least 16 people were killed and 30 wounded by explosions in three restaurants in the northeast of Syria on Wednesday, a monitoring group said, in attacks claimed by the militant Islamic State (IS) group.

At least one of the blasts in the city of Qamishli was caused by a suicide bomber, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told media.

Reporters 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 media.

News agency Amaq, which supports IS extremists, said the group had claimed responsibility for the attacks on the city, which lies near the border with Turkey and close to Iraq.

“Dozens of dead and wounded in the bombings by the fighters of the Islamic State in different parts of Qamishli city,” it said.

Qamishli 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 Kurdish fighters have coordinated on security in Hasakeh province where IS militants have tried to advance.

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

More than 250,000 people have been killed in Syria’s war, which began in 2011 with anti-government protests but spiralled into a bloody conflict.