Turkey on Wednesday sent tanks across the border to help Syrian rebels retake the key Islamic State-held town of Jarablus and to conta. But it also is aimed at US -allied Kurdish forces that have gained control in recent months of most of the territory along the Turkey-Syria border.
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Of particular concern is Syria’s second city of Aleppo, where up to 300,000 civilians are believed to be trapped amid an increasingly ferocious battle between rebel groups a government forces backed by Russian airstrikes.
The soldier’s death is the first reported fatality on the Turkish side.
Turkish planes bombarded positions south of the town, in what one group allied with Kurdish rebels called a “dangerous escalation”.
The fresh fighting suggested that Turkey and its Syrian proxies are increasingly focused on stopping Kurdish forces from gaining more territory in northern Syria, particularly along Turkey’s border, potentially signalling a widening of the conflict. “That’s why we are in Jarablus, that’s why we are in Bashiqa (in Iraq)”.
“We will continue until the Islamic State and other terrorist elements are taken out”, he said.
To be sure, Syrian rebels and Kurdish forces have regularly fought each other elsewhere in Syria.
The media office of the Turkish-backed Nour el-din el-Zinki rebel group said the Syrian rebels were backed by Turkish tanks.
The local Shabha Press news agency said 23 people were killed in Saturday’s attack, and published photos showing several of the dead, including a man who appeared to have been riding a motorbike at the time of the strike.
The sources said the rocket was sacked from territory held by the Kurdish YPG militia.
Anadolu Agency quoted sources as saying that FSA fighters are now clearing Jarabulus of mines and explosives planted by the DAESH terrorist group before its withdrawal from the city.
Ankara wants to force the Kurds to withdraw to the east of Euphrates River, stopping short of establishing a corridor to link two Kurdish-led areas in north-western Syria. It said the target was an ammunition depot and a command center for “terror groups” but didn’t name the area or the group.
Syrian rebels are continuing to secure Jarabulus as more Turkish tanks have rumbled over the border to assist them.
The Kurdish Democratic Union Party condemned the attack on the village.
Ankara fears the emergence of a contiguous autonomous Kurdish region in Syria would bolster Kurdish rebels across the border in south-eastern Turkey. Al-Waer is the last rebel-held area in Homs, Syria’s third largest city. An activist in the neighborhood Bebars al-Talawy said at least a dozen airstrikes were launched Sunday, killing one person.
Saturday’s deadly strikes come after 15 people, among them 11 children, were killed in a barrel bomb attack on Bab al-Nayrab on Thursday. The district’s hospital was bombed and made non-operational earlier this month.
Human Rights Watch said it had documented the use of incendiary weapons in at least 18 different instances between June and August in rebel-held areas.
The al-Waer neighborhood of almost 75,000 people has been under siege since March and has been one area that U.N agencies have reported hard to access. An aid convoy reached the area on Aug.25. 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.
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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.
