Tenuous coalition The animosities threaten to pit two groups of USA -aided forces – the CIA- and Pentagon-backed Syrian Arab and Turkmen rebels and the Pentagon-backed Kurdish forces – against each other, potentially taking their attention away from fighting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
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The strikes came as Syrian rebels backed by Turkey clashed with fighters opposed by Ankara at the village of al-Amarna, some 10 km south of the border town of Jarablus that was seized by the Turkey-backed rebels from IS this week.
The agency did not say if the bombardment was from artillery or war planes or specify which groups were targeted. US officials said their principal mission was to oversee the recruitment and training of more Arabs for the fight against the Islamic State, apparently to help make the Kurds not appear as an invading force. But the body is perceived by the Syrian rebels to be controlled by the Kurdish forces. Turkey on Wednesday sent tanks across the border to help Syrian rebels retake the key Islamic State-held town of Jarablus and.
That group includes fighters from the Kurdish YPG, which is the Syrian wing of a Kurdish group in Turkey called the PKK, which Ankara has outlawed and considers a terrorist organization.
According to the group, the strikes hit near a tent where people were mourning those killed in a barrel bomb attack Thursday in the neighboring district of Bab al-Nayrab, where 15 people, among them 11 children, lost their lives.
The group said there were injuries but did not give any further details.
On Saturday, an AFP correspondent at the Turkish border village of Karkamis saw six more tanks crossing into Syria, adding to the dozens of tanks and hundreds of troops already in the country.
There was no immediate comment from Turkish officials.
Another faction fighting under the Syrian Democratic Forces banner, the Army of the Revolutionaries, demanded the US -led coalition explain the justification for the Turkish assault, and accused Turkey of supporting hardline Islamist groups, including the formerly Al-Qaeda affiliated Front for the Conquest of Syria.
Once Syria’s economic powerhouse, Aleppo city has been ravaged by the conflict that began with anti-government protests in March 2011.
Also on Saturday, the Syrian government said it had retaken control of the town of Darayya, near the capital Damascus, after the last rebels left under a deal ending a four-year siege.
Some 700 gunmen and 4,000 civilians were evacuated.
The ground incursion into northern Syria, which Ankara claims is mainly aimed at fighting Daesh, is partly meant to contain Kurdish forces.
Meanwhile, the UN’s special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, appealed to the opposition to approve plans to deliver aid to rebel-held eastern Aleppo and government-held western Aleppo through a government-controlled route north of the city during a 48-hour humanitarian pause.
“Our concern has been the fact that the YPG has a proven track record of forcibly displacing non-Kurds”, a senior Turkish official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity as per protocol.
Some 280 rebels, their families and wounded arrived Saturday morning in a village in the northern rebel-held Idlib province.
The U.S. supported Turkey’s call for the Kurdish forces to move back, and Kurdish officials said they withdrew the YPG forces from Manbij.
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Some of the fighters were killed in Sunday’s shelling and air strikes but the number was not yet clear, said the Observatory, a Britain-based monitor with a network of sources on the ground.
