The Homs Local Council appealed to the United Nations envoy to Syria to negotiate a truce for al-Waer, condemning the government’s “siege policy” that aims to force residents and fighters to surrender.
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The Turkish incursion has left Washington scrambling to get its feuding allies to focus their firepower on Islamic State instead of each other after clashes that have threatened to unravel America’s war strategy in Syria.
YPG representative to the global anti-ISIL coalition, Polat Can, also confirmed that they had reached a truce with Turkish-backed rebels.
A subsequent statement from the Jarablus Military Council announced a temporary cease-fire “under the oversight of the global coalition led by the United States” in order to spare the people of Jarablus “the scourge of war”.
According to a report by Yeni Şafak daily, Zahir al-Sakit, a commander in the Aleppo military council, stated that the PYD has considerable amounts of chemical weapons and warned that those weapons could be used against civilians in order to shift the blame on Turkey. However, the Operation Eurphrates’ Shield also seeks to stop Kurdish forces from expanding their territorial gains.
White House officials said Monday that Obama’s stop will come with announcements of new executive actions aimed at boosting clean energy production in the USA and mitigating the effect of climate change such as wildfires and drought.
“If those units respect the demographics of Syrian lands and join a unified Syria, that means we will stop the conflict”, said Maj Abdul Rahim. “Now they try to propagate this as a ceasefire”, the official added. “Their strategy basically is to continue the fight until they push YPG across the Euphrates River”.
The wounded soldiers were immediately rushed to a hospital and ISIL targets in Syria’s Kulliyah region were destroyed with “precision”, the statement added.
Turkey sent tanks across the border to help Syrian opposition forces take the town of Jarablus from the Islamic State militants to halt the advance of Syrian Kurdish forces who are affiliated with Turkey’s outlawed Kurdish rebels.
USA fighter jets take off from an airbase in Turkey to bomb ISIS strongholds in Syria and Iraq – and to provide air support for the very Kurdish fighters that Turkey is now targeting.
The U.S.is backing both Kurdish fighters and Turkey in the multilayered Syrian war, even as the two sides have exchanged fire inside northern Syria over the past three days.
There was more heavy fighting Monday along the Turkey-Syriaborder, but two US allies seem more intent on fighting each other than ISIS. Over the weekend, clashes killed several Kurdish fighters.
The battle now pits Turkey against the Kurdish-led force known as the Syria Democratic Forces- a USA -backed proxy that is the most effective ground force battling IS militants in Syria’s 5-year-old civil war.
In its northern Syria offensive, Turkish forces and their rebel allies have taken a string of villages in areas controlled by the Kurdish-aligned Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and advanced towards Manbij, a city the SDF seized from Islamic State this month in a US-backed campaign.
Darwish said SDF forces have pulled back to south of the Sajour and into the Manbij area, a move unlikely to be accepted by Turkey, which wants them to withdraw completely east of the Euphrates.
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“If they don’t, they’ll be a target”. “So, there is still a way forward to solve this crisis diplomatically”.
