Turkey army, Kurd-backed forces clash in north Syria

Sources told VOA that the operation was put together in less than 12 days and that rebels were taking instructions from the Turkish military.

Turkey yesterday launched its first major ground assault into Syria since the country’s civil war began, sending in tanks and special forces backed by U.S. airstrikes to help Syrian rebels retake a border town from Islamic State militants. Turkey wants to stop the YPG from grabbing a contiguous stretch of land along the border – territory that Syrian Kurds want badly in order to create an autonomous zone in northern Syria. The call came despite Kurdish forces’ effectiveness in fighting ISIS on the western side of the river.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warned that if YPG forces did not move back east of the nearby Euphrates river, they would take “necessary measures”.

“Jarablus and north Syria will be a graveyard for the murderous invader Erdogan and his mercenaries”.

The U.S. provided close air support for the cross-border action by Turkey that began Wednesday. “That would be a huge detriment to the anti-IS campaign”, said Chris Kozak, a Syria researcher at the Washington-based Institute of the Study of War, referring to the main USA -backed Kurdish faction fighting IS.

Kurdish self-rule The Syrian Kurdish militia is closely linked to the PKK, an outlawed group that has waged a conflict for more than 30 years to win self-rule for Turkey’s Kurdish minority, a battle in which tens of thousands of people have died.

With the civil war that has killed an estimated, 290,000 people still raging, 11 children were killed on Thursday in a barrel bomb attack carried out by government forces on a rebel-held neighbourhood of Syria’s Aleppo city, a monitor said.

The FSA commanders, who spoke to AA on condition of anonymity, said that Daesh militants fled the city, but FSA members were searching for any bombs that might have been planted by the militants.

As a result, the Turks are now threatening to force the YPG to withdraw. 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.

Syrian rebels backed by Turkish special forces, tanks and warplanes entered Jarablus this week, seizing the frontier town that had been an Islamic State stronghold.

Turkish army tanks move toward the Syrian border, in Karkamis, Turkey, Aug. 25. They were then followed by around 10 armoured vehicles. “We won’t listen to the demands of Turkey or powers outside of Turkey”, Xelil said according to a report from Rudaw, a Kurdish media network.

The YPG said it handed the military command of the town over to the Manbej Military Council, a coalition formed by local fighters from seven groups affiliated with the SDF.

In fact, backed by the US, the Syrian Kurds have used the fight against ISIS and the chaos of the Syrian conflict to seize almost the entire stretch of the border with Turkey in northern Syria.

The apparent efficiency of the operation also marked a major boost for the Turkish army whose reputation had been badly tarnished by the failed July 15 coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan staged by rogue elements in the armed forces. Speaking to the private NTV television, he said that “for now, the withdrawal hasn’t fully taken place”.

A spokesman for the US -led anti-IS coalition, Col. JD Dorrian, said some members of the force that seized control of Manbij went east of the river, but some remained to secure and clear land mines. YPG forces, which make up a crucial portion of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), have been regularly supported by the U.S.in the past.

The rebels fighting with Turkish support are hostile to the YPG, with the sides clashing repeatedly since previous year.

But a Turkish official said on Wednesday that Ankara would “continue operations until we are convinced that imminent threats against the country’s national security have been neutralised”.

Ankara said it had yet to see any sign of a withdrawal and Isik said that Turkey had been promised that the withdrawal would happen within a week.

A still from a video released by the Turkish-backed Syrian rebel group Firqat al-Hamzah shows fighters marching past a Turkish Otokar Cobra armoured vehicle during the operation to capture Jarabulus on 24 August. In return, the U.S. got something it has pushed for in vain for years – getting Turkey to take a more proactive stance to battle ISIS fighters on its border, after allowing them to cross it with impunity for years.

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He said: “We are very hopeful that it will be a very short time until we can roll”.