Clashes in places where the IS group are not present are a “source of deep concern”, the Pentagon said.
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Experts warned that it was far from clear whether Ankara would back down, given that the United States was unlikely to side with Kurdish militia over North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally Turkey.
US -backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria have “all” moved east of the Euphrates River, a USA defense official said Monday, an action Washington hopes will reduce conflict between two partner forces. It leaves Washington in the tough spot of having to choose between two allies and is likely to divert resources from the fight against IS.
Following the Turkish incursion, Vice President Joe Biden said that the USA will cut off all US support for our Syrian Kurd allies unless they comply with Turkish demands that they withdraw to the east of the Euphrates River.
Cook said the United States doesn’t support reported Turkish air strikes and artillery shelling of US-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters or Kurdish attacks on Turkish troops in areas where IS fighters no longer are operating.
Carter says the US has persuaded the SDF to stay east of the Euphrates River, where they will not come in contact with Turkish forces on the west side of the Euphrates, and they can both fight the Islamic State from those positions.
On Monday, the Turkish air force launched air strikes on PKK bases in northern Iraq, state media said.
Men inspect a damaged site after double airstrikes on the rebel held Bab al-Nairab neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, August 27, 2016.
And President Barack Obama will meet his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan next weekend in China, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit, with Syria high on the agenda. Washington’s biggest fear is that the animosities could divert resources and attention from fighting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
“All the YPG are on the east of the Euphrates”, the official said.
The situation in northern Syria is yet another complication in the country’s already tangled civil war, and potentially throws a wrench in USA plans to defeat the Islamic State group in the region.
Turkey is a close USA ally, and the operation was backed up by Turkish and American airstrikes.
The council says its fighters will withdraw to areas south of the Sajour River, a tributary of the Euphrates.
On Monday, Turkish-backed forces advanced on Manbij, a city about 30 km (20 miles) south of Turkey’s border captured this month by the SDF, in which Kurdish fighters play a major part, with US help. The YPG, he claimed, was out of Jarablus and Manbij, “Because the YPG are east of the Euphrates”.
They said they will withdraw in order for the rebels not to “have any justification to continue shelling civilians”.
A Turkish soldier was killed Saturday by a Kurdish rocket attack, the first such fatality in Turkey’s ground offensive.
The Observatory also reported clashes between rebels and IS fighters on the western edge of Jarablus.
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The Turkish military carried out 61 artillery strikes around Jarablus over the past 24 hours, Reuters news agency reported yesterday. The Local Coordination Committees, an activist collective, said the rebels captured seven more villages since late Sunday.
