open link in new tab with github markdown using target="_blank"

Well it seems that the simple answer is "It's not possible". Github does not include the target attribute even if you use plain HTML, so it's not a in the final HTML Anchor tag. Annoying, but OK, users can just do a CTRL+click (on Windows and Linux) or CMD+click (on MacOS) on the link, the get the same behavior.

There is a solution specific to websites using GitHub pages: adding line

markdown: kramdown

to file _config.yml, you can use [go](http://stackoverflow.com){:target="_blank" rel="noopener"} because then GitHub pages engine uses another markdown called kramdown for generating html. However, it does not work on previews and in markdown rendered by GitHub directly in the project repository.

From what I have read and researched, it is not possible. I wanted to do something similar but soon realized that it is not a feature in git md, unfortunately.