It said at least 20 civilians had been killed and 50 others wounded in the airstrikes.
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The new fighting pits two US -backed Syrian forces against each other: rebel groups aided by the CIA and allied intelligence agencies, and Kurdish-led militias that work with the Pentagon under an umbrella group called the Syrian Democratic Forces.
Turkey flexed its military muscle across the border in war-torn Syria this week by helping rebels retake the border town of Jarablus from ISIS, marking a decisive win for the Free Syrian Army. The Turkish-backed forces first seized the Syrian border town of Jarablus from Islamic State militants before pushing south into areas held by Kurdish-aligned militias.
Turkish troops head to the Syrian border, in Karkamis, Turkey, Saturday, Aug. 27, 2016.
Turkey-backed Syrian rebels captured two villages from forces allied to the Kurdish-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria on Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Sherwan Darwish, a spokesman for Kurdish-led forces in the village of Manbij, said on Twitter Saturday night: “While our forces fighting #IS Some #Turkey backed militias r attacking our positions & hampering our & Intl Coalition’s fight against terror”. The aim may be primarily defensive, limited to controlling the zone between Jarabulus and the Kurdish enclave of Afrin 70 miles to the west through Arab and Turkoman proxies backed by the Turkish armed forces.
The pro-Kurdish fighters said earlier Turkey had for the first time carried out airstrikes on its positions.
The Syrian government condemned the Turkish intervention in Syria, saying any anti-terror effort should be coordinated with the Syrian government, otherwise it’s nothing but flagrant violation to the country’s sovereignty.
It is the fifth day since Turkey launched a cross-border military campaign.
According to residents, the escalation followed recent threats by soldiers at checkpoints that the Syrian government’s patience was running out with the district, the last rebel holdout in the city.
As part of that rebalancing, the United States warned the Kurds last week that they should return to the eastern side of the Euphrates River, essentially asking them to cede control of areas they had seized recently from Islamic State fighters.
There was no immediate comment from the YPG, but forces aligned to the Kurdish group had said on Saturday that no Kurdish militia were in areas being targeted by Turkish in the cross-border offensive.
Meanwhile, the evacuation of Daraya, a town crushed by a four-year Syrian army siege, continued, with hundreds of fighters and their families arriving in rebel-held territory in the northwest.
The Jarablus Military Council says the airstrikes Saturday on their bases in Amarneh village marked an “unprecedented and risky escalation” and came after Turkish artillery shelled the positions the day before.
Hospital officials in rebel-held Aleppo say the death toll from the two barrel bombs dropped Saturday in the Bab al-Nairab neighborhood is likely to rise.
The around 8,000 civilians left in the town are also being evacuated. Other civilians were escorted to shelters in government-controlled suburbs of Damascus.
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“With this aggression, a new conflict period will begin in the region”, said the Jarabulus Military Council which is linked to the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
