At least 20 civilians were killed on Sunday in Turkish shelling of a border town in Syria, a monitor group reported. The dramatic escalation of Turkey’s involvement in the Syrian civil war last week aimed to help the Syrian rebels drive the Islamic State group out of the border town of Jarablus.
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A Turkish soldier was killed by a Kurdish rocket attack late Saturday, the first such fatality in Turkey’s ground offensive dubbed Euphrates Shield that began August 24.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the rebels have captured 21 towns and villages near Jarablus from the US -backed and Kurdish-led Syria Democratic Forces. It is the first reported Turkish fatality in Syria.
Turkey’s offensive into Syria began on Wednesday, supporting its rebel allies with Turkish special forces, tanks and warplanes.
The Observatory said the SDF-allied Jarablus Military Council fighters had withdrawn from the villages of al-Amarna and Ayn al-Bayda as the rebels backed by Turkish tanks advanced into them.
The escalation against the neighborhood comes after the evacuation of Daraya, a Damascus suburb, following a deal struck with the government after a grueling bombing campaign and a tight siege.
Any action against Kurdish forces in Syria puts Turkey at odds with its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally the United States, which backs the SDF and YPG, seeing them as the most reliable and effective ally in the fight against Islamic State in Syria.
In comments televised by CNN Turk, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus referred to Turkey’s fight against “terrorist groups operating in Marea-Jarablus line”, an area running along the border between Bab al-Salama and the town of Jarablus. SDF-allied militia damaged three Turkish tanks, it said.
Turkey has ordered predominantly Kurdish Syrian militants to withdraw east of the Euphrates river “immediately” or face more strikes by Turkish forces that crossed the border last week.
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.
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The Local Coordination Committees, an activist collective, says the rebels captured seven more villages since late Sunday. Minutes later, Khandakani said another barrel bomb was dropped, injuring an ambulance driver, and hampering rescue efforts. But he didn’t specify a goal for the fight against the Kurdish forces. The group blamed Russian and Syrian joint military operations room for the use of such weapons in violation of global law.
