BEIRUT: At least 32 people were killed on Tuesday in an Islamic State group attack near a refugee camp on the Syrian side of the border with Iraq, a monitor said, reports AFP.
The attack came as the Kurdish-Arab alliance known as the Syrian Democratic Forces presses an offensive against IS in the town of Tabqa as part of an assault on the jihadist bastion Raqa.
 The dawn IS attack hit a makeshift camp where some 300 families were waiting to cross into SDF-held territory in Hasakeh province, in northeastern Syria.
"At least five suicide attackers blew themselves up outside and inside a camp for Iraqi refugees and displaced Syrians in Hasakeh province," said Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.Heavy clashes then erupted between the IS fighters and the SDF, some of whose combatants were among the dead, Abdel Rahman told AFP.
The makeshift camp lies in the Rajm al-Salibeh area just inside Syrian territory, and at least 21 of the dead were displaced Syrians or Iraqi refugees, the Observatory said.
"At least 30 people were wounded, and the death toll may rise because some people are in critical condition and others are still unaccounted for," the Britain-based monitor said.
Kamal Derbas, a press officer for the Kurdish Red Crescent, put the civilian death toll at 22.