“The PYD has deployed just two kilometers from Azaz since Tuesday and today they have started to carry out their attack to seize the city”, the rebel commander reportedly said.
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De Mistura is believed to have told the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet that he can not “realistically” get the parties in the civil war back to the table by next week, “but we intend to do so soon”, he said.
The TAK, which is a splinter group of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), vowed to continue its attacks.
It said that despite Turkey’s “provocations and attacks” on Kurdish areas in Syria, it has never retaliated against Turkey.
Turkey has been shelling Syrian Kurdish forces since the weekend, and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blamed them for a bombing in Ankara that killed 28 people on Wednesday.
Erdogan said Friday that Turkish authorities don’t have the slightest doubt that the YPG and its political arm, the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, were behind the bombing and said Turkey was saddened by its Western allies’ failure to brand them as terrorist groups.
Turkish military jets bombed a Kurdish militia camp in Iraq, and a second bomb blast went off in southeast Turkey today, a day after the Ankara explosion that left 28 dead and another 61 injured. And both are part of the broad coalition fighting the Islamic State.
“We call on all the countries to take a clear stance against those terrorist organisations…either stand by the side of Turkey as a state or take side with terrorists”.
The Turkish leader appeared to refer to a USA air drop of military supplies in late 2014 meant for Iraqi Kurdish forces during the battle for the town of Kobane, Reuters reported.
Turkey reeled Wednesday from a deadly bombing of a military convoy in the capital, plunging its leaders deeper into crisis mode and underscoring the country’s vulnerability to the Syrian war and revitalized Kurdish insurgency. The military action targeted a group of PKK rebels n northern Iraq’s Haftanin region. He also blamed the government of President Bashar Assad for allegedly supporting the Syrian Kurdish militia.
The United Nations and the United States have condemned the terror attack on Turkish military in Ankara, with America reaffirming solidarity with its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation partner and pledging cooperation in the fight against terrorism.
Hundreds of people have been killed in Turkey in renewed fighting following the collapse of the peace process between the government and the Kurds in July. Six soldiers were killed after PKK rebels detonated a bomb on the road. It was one of the deadliest attacks on the Turkish military in recent years.
The attack struck the heart of power in the Turkish capital in an area where the headquarters of the army, the parliament and prime minister’s offices are in close proximity.
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Mr Erdogan pointed out that he had told President Obama months before that after three plane-loads of USA weapons arrived, half ended up in the hands of fighters of so-called Islamic State and the rest with the PYD.
