A bomb has exploded in a shopping area in a northern Syrian city held by pro-Turkish forces, killing at least eight people, a war monitor said. Another 23 were wounded when the car bomb exploded in the middle of a popular market in Azaz, Aleppo province, early on Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The British-based observatory, which has a network of sources inside Syria, said the blast caused significant damage and sparked a fire. An Agence France-Presse correspondent saw emergency responders working at the scene and the remains of a mangled vehicle. Syria’s war began after the government repressed peaceful protests in 2011, and it escalated into a deadly conflict that pulled in jihadists and foreign armies. 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 big cities and towns such as Azaz.