The soldier’s death is the first reported fatality on the Turkish side.
Advertisement
A monitoring group and Kurdish sources have also said Kurdish-backed fighters clashed with Turkish tanks on the Syrian side of the border on Sunday.
“We are still waiting to see if they are going to retreat back to east of the Euphrates”, said Ahmed Othman, the commander of an ethnic Turkmen force within the USA -supported Free Syrian Army, referring to the Kurds.
Turkey’s state news agency, citing military sources, said the Turkish Military Joint Special Task Forces and coalition airplanes targeted an ammunition depot and a barrack and outpost used as command centers by “terror groups” south of Jarablus Saturday morning.
The Syrian government and its Russian ally are the only ones operating helicopters over Aleppo.
The Observatory said 11 buses were in Daraya to continue the evacuation.
The tanks were hit 7 kilometers south of Jarablus, where Turkish forces helped the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to clear Daesh terrorists from the area.
The Pentagon’s backing of these forces – collectively called the Syrian Democratic Forces and dominated by the YPG, which in Kurdish stands for People’s Protection Units – has irritated Turkey. Meanwhile a bloody battle for the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest, is ongoing.
The Jarablus Military Council, supported by the USA -backed and Kurdish-led Syria Democratic Forces, said the airstrikes on their bases in the village of Amarneh marked an “unprecedented and unsafe escalation”.
Meanwhile, the United Nations special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, appealed to the opposition to approve plans to deliver aid to rebel-held eastern Aleppo and government-held Aleppo through a government-controlled route north of Aleppo during a 48-hour humanitarian pause.
Ankara fears the emergence of a contiguous autonomous Kurdish region in Syria would bolster Kurdish rebels across the border in southeast Turkey.
The declaration Saturday comes only a day after the evacuation of almost 5,000 residents and fighters from the suburb began. The deployment was the latest phase in Turkey’s military operation inside Syria-codenamed “Euphrates Shield”-to oust IS from the border region and also counter advances by a Kurdish militia opposed by Ankara”. The deal followed an extensive government campaign of aerial bombing and shelling of Daraya, the last bastion against President Bashar Assad in the western Ghouta region, southwest of Damascus. The gunmen and their families headed to the northern rebel-controlled Idlib province.
The pro-Kurdish fighters said earlier Turkey had for the first time carried out airstrikes on its positions.
The roughly 8,000 civilians left in the town are also to be evacuated.
At least 15 civilians have been killed in a barrel bomb attack on a wake being held for children who died in earlier air strikes in the rebel-held Syrian city of Aleppo.
Syria’s regime has been accused of regularly using barrel bombs – crude, explosive devices – on rebel-held areas that are home to civilians.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the airstrikes.
The media office of the Turkish-backed Nour el-din el-Zinki rebel group said the Syrian rebels were backed by Turkish tanks. Hurriyet said the Turkish forces had been given an order to “strike immediately” should the YPG be seen to make any move towards the liberated town.
A USA defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the record, said that while Kurdish commanders and most of their fighters had withdrawn to the east of the Euphrates, a smaller number of Kurdish forces remain within Manbij.
Advertisement
The incursion was partly aimed at containing Kurdish-led forces.
