The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that there was calm on the southern front of Jarablus, which Turkish forces captured from IS terrorists last week. The YPG, which controls almost Syria’s entire northern border with Turkey, has been fighting against Daesh.
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Thomas called the agreement to stop fighting each other “encouraging”.
U.S. state department spokesman John Kirby would not comment on whether a ceasefire was in place, but said the clashes had stopped “and that’s the outcome that we want”.
The IS-run Aamaq news agency said Tuesday that Abu Muhammed al-Adnani was “martyred while surveying the operations to repel the military campaigns against Aleppo”, without providing further details. The Turkish authorities worry that gains made by Syrian Kurds toward autonomy in Syria would rile Kurdish separatists inside Turkey even more.
Turkey’s military said three of its soldiers were wounded in northern Syria when their tank was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Conley said she hopes both leaders come out the meeting publicly expressing “a much stronger statement on Syria” and indicating some kind of agreement on a path forward. A commander in one of the Turkish-backed Syrian rebel groups that have clashed with SDF-allied groups south of Jarablus also denied such a deal. A Turkish soldier was killed Saturday by a Kurdish rocket attack, the first such fatality in Turkey’s ground offensive.
Turkey says the SDF is largely controlled by the YPG – the armed units of the PYD- which is functioning as Syrian branch for internationally-designated terrorist organization the PKK.
Local sources also indicated that the YPG plans to kill the civilians used in the abductions and spread false reports that those civilians were killed by the Turkish army and Turkey-backed FSA forces.
Gen. Joseph Votel, the commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday that he is working to prevent such clashes.
Last week, Turkey sent its troops and warplanes to back Syrian rebels in their advance on Jarablus, a town near the Turkish border and the next IS-stronghold after Manbij.
There was no immediate confirmation from Turkey.
“We agreed on a ceasefire with the Turkish state via the United states and the global coalition” that is fighting the Islamic State group, said Ali Hajo, spokesman of the Jarablus Military Council.
He described the agreement as “provisional”.
“Uncoordinated operations and maneuvers only provide room for ISIL to find sanctuary and continue planning attacks against Turkey, the SDF, the United States, and our partners around the world”, he also noted.
The United States says Kurdish YPG forces have given assurances that they will return east of the river once Manbij is clear of IS forces. “They are terrorists” the official said.
The clashes are of “deep concern”, declared Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook, adding that they were not coordinated with USA forces, “and we do not support them”.
Turkey dramatically escalated its involvement in Syria’s civil war last week.
The comments by Ibrahim Kalin published on Tuesday by the pro-government Daily Sabah came a day after the USA urged Turkish troops and Kurdish forces in northern Syria to halt their fighting, saying it hinders efforts to defeat the Islamic State group.
Kalin says that the “Americans should revise their policy of supporting (the Kurdish-led force) at all costs”. The SDF has support from the US – which sees the group as an effective Syrian ally against ISIS, putting Turkey at odds with a fellow North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member and further complicating Syria’s five-year-old civil war.
PARIS (AP) – French President Francois Hollande has criticized Turkey’s “contradictory” military intervention in Syria and warned Russian Federation not to become a “protagonist” in the war.
Hollande, in a diplomatic speech Tuesday, said “multiple, contradictory interventions carry the risk of a general inflammation” of the fighting that has devastated the country.
Ankara considers the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its YPG militia to be arms of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group that is in the midst of a bloody insurgency against the state in eastern Turkey. France is part of that coalition.
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Hollande urged Russia to cooperate with the USA -led coalition and said he would invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to France in October, saying Russia should be “a player in negotiations, not a protagonist in the action”.
