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PYD retreats from positions west of Euphrates, US says
The Turkish assault, launched in retaliation after a string of militant bombings in Turkey, adds yet another powerhouse force on the ground in an already complicated war.
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Thank you for reading and relying on TulsaWorld.com for your news and information. “They can not, will not, under any circumstance get American support if they do not keep that commitment”, Biden said.
On Wednesday, Ankara launched the “Euphrates Shield” military operation with aerial support from the US-led coalition, with the stated aim of clearing the town of Jarablus in northern Syria of the Daesh terrorist group.
That statement refers to an apparently separate pullout from the withdrawal that Turkey is seeking from the Kurdish forces.
Before talks can begin, though, USA officials say it is imperative that Russian Federation use its influence with Syrian President Bashar Assad to halt attacks on moderate opposition forces, open humanitarian aid corridors, and concentrate any offensive action on the Islamic State group and other extremists not covered by what has become a largely ignored truce.
Defense Minister Fikri Isik told Turkey’s NTV that the military’s “strategic priority” is to prevent the Kurds from joining the territories they now hold in Syria.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu shot back saying Muslim’s opposition to the operations proved the PYD’s “secret agenda” to form a Kurdish state. Photographs posted on social media showed rebels posing in front of deserted government buildings in the town’s central square and raising the flags of Turkey and the Free Syrian Army over the gates to the town.
But the decision by Syrian Kurdish fighters on Thursday to retreat from contentious areas appeared to showcase increased US leverage on the battlefield, and diminished the immediate threat of clashes with Turkish troops. He said the operation was targeting both Islamic State and the Kurdish YPG militia, whose gains in northern Syria have alarmed Turkey.
Turkey has emphasised that the offensive was also aimed at the YPG, who Ankara sees as a terror group bent on carving out an autonomous region in Syria. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said late Thursday Turkish artillery have shelled a group of Syrian Kurdish militia fighters in the north of the town of Mambij after they allegedly ignored warnings to retreat.
Turkey on Thursday said it had “every right” to intervene if Syrian Kurdish militia do not withdraw east of the Euphrates River in Syria, as promised by the United States.
Syrian Kurdish officials contacted by The Associated Press would not confirm or deny that their forces were withdrawing east.
“We were greeted in Jarabulus by civilians with flowers, and there was a lot of joy among the people”, said Brig.
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said this week that northern Syria should not become the domain of one group and that a “secure zone”, an internationally policed buffer area Turkey proposed in the past, should be reconsidered. Instead, the main Syrian Kurdish faction, the YPG, said its troops had “returned to their bases” after helping liberate the northern Syrian city of Manbij from the Islamic State group earlier this month. “We are waiting for it and following it”. They are the predominant element in the umbrella group the US has created and called the Syrian Democratic Forces.
The offensive was spearheaded by Turkey, which sent tanks, troops and warplanes into Syria for the first time in the country’s 5-year-old war, to help a force estimated to comprise between 1,000 and 1,500 Syrian rebels.
The Kurdish forces were still present around the Syrian town of Manbij seized from IS earlier this month, which lies well west of the Euphrates, it added.
Jan Egeland, who heads up humanitarian aid in the office of the U.N. Syria envoy, said the U.N. now awaits assurances from two rebel groups and written authorization from President Bashar Assad’s government before any aid convoys can go through to Aleppo amid an upsurge in fighting that has left the city almost surrounded by Russian-backed Syrian troops.
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El Deeb reported from Beirut.