BEIRUT: A car bomb killed at least 20 people on Monday in the northern Syrian town of Darkoush, close to the Turkish border, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

It added that dozens of people were wounded by the explosion in the market of Darkoush, a small rebel-controlled town two kilometres from the frontier. Some of the wounded were taken into Turkey for treatment.

The British-based Observatory, which monitors violence in Syria through a network of activists and medical and military sources, also said that 12 of the dead were identified by name and another eight badly charred bodies had been found.

The group states that more than 115,000 people have been killed so far in Syria's two-and-a-half-year conflict, which grew out of protests which erupted in March 2011 against President Bashar al-Assad's rule.