Any action against Kurdish forces in Syria puts Turkey at odds with the USA, its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally. Kurdish accounts circulated a video allegedly showing the moment the SDF destroyed a Turkish tank near Jarablus.
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The YPG says its forces have withdrawn from the area and their presence could not be used as a pretext for an attack. As Daesh moved to the town, hundreds of Kurdish civilians took refuge in neighboring Turkey, where they were kept along the border.
There was no immediate comment from the YPG militia, but forces aligned with the Kurdish group had said yesterday that no Kurdish militia had been in areas being targeted by Turkish troops or its allies.
According to Turkish news agencies, a soldier was killed and 3 others were injured after a rocket fired by Kurdish rebels hit their tank.
It said 20 people died in strikes on Jeb el-Kussa, and another 15 were killed in a separate bombardment near al-Amarneh.
Turkey has said its campaign is against the so-called Islamic State and also aims at stopping Kurdish forces extending territory they control.
A Reuters witness in Karkamis, a Turkish border town, heard jets and artillery bomb Syrian targets. The YPG has been one of the most reliable fighting forces in the war whether they are battling ISIS or Assad’s army.
Separately, a monitoring group said at least 35 civilians and four militants were killed by a wave of Turkish strikes in the same area. Turkish leaders have vowed to drive both IS and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, away from the border.
Since then, Syrian rebels have been pushing westward, chasing the Islamic State, as well as southward into areas controlled by forces aligned with the US -backed Syrian Democratic Forces.
On Saturday Turkey’s military suffered its first fatality of the offensive, when a soldier died in a tank hit by a rocket. But following the Turkish offensive, local forces with Kurdish fighters and backed by YPG advisers pushed their way north of Manbij, in a rush for control of Jarablus.
ANHA, the news agency of the Kurdish semi-autonomous areas, said Beir Khoussa has “reportedly lost all its residents”.
SDF spokesman Shervan Darwish said the airstrikes and shelling started overnight and continued Sunday along the front line, killing many civilians in Beir Khoussa and nearby areas. SDF-allied militia damaged three Turkish tanks, it said.
A Syrian rebel commander said on Sunday that Turkish-backed rebels aimed to capture Manbij.
Meanwhile, the United Nations 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 Aleppo through a government-controlled route north of Aleppo during a 48-hour humanitarian pause. The district’s hospital was bombed and made non-operational earlier this month.
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If Obama remains true to form, he will order the pullout of our special forces from their positions with the YPG and allow the Kurds and Turkish military to fight it out among themselves.
