Syria Car Bombs Toll Rises to 20

The toll from two car bomb attacks which targeted al-Qaida and Kurdish checkpoints in northern Syria has risen to 20, most of them civilians, a monitoring group said Sunday.

Among the dead in Saturday's attacks were four members of the civil defense force, whose volunteers risk their lives daily to rescue casualties from bombing sites.

"The number of people killed in a car bomb attack near the al-Nusra Front checkpoint has risen to 15," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Two of the dead were members of al-Qaida's offshoot in Syria, al-Nusra Front. The other 13 were civilians, including the civil defense workers.

In a post on Facebook, a civil defense force member from the neighboring province of Idlib described his four colleagues killed as "heroes."

Some 30 kilometers (20 miles) away, also in Aleppo province, a second car bomb exploded, this time targeting a Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).

Three fighters manning the checkpoint were killed along with two civilians, said the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on information from a network of activists and medics on the ground.