Turkey sent tanks across the border to help Syrian rebels drive the Islamic State group out of the frontier town of Jarablus last week in a dramatic escalation of its involvement in the Syrian civil war.
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On Sunday, Turkish forces ramped up their offensive against pro-Kurdish forces near a town wrested back from IS this week by Turkish-backed Arab rebels.
At least 35 civilians were killed, according to activists.
The fighting erupted at the village of al-Amarna, some 10 km (6 miles) south of the border town of Jarablus that was seized by the Turkey-backed rebels from Islamic State this week.
The fighting pits Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally, against a USA -backed proxy that is the most effective ground force battling IS militants in Syria in the 5-year-old civil war.
Kurdish groups in Syria accuse Turkey of singling out its fighters which Ankara views with suspicion due to its ties to Turkey’s Kurdish insurgency. The Turkish military has bombed targets around the town, located 40 kilometres south of Jarablus, apparently convinced that the Kurds have not followed through on their promise to leave or that they seek to return.
The animosities threaten to pit two groups of US-aided forces – the Central Intelligence Agency and Pentagon-backed Syrian Arab and Turkmen rebels of the Free Syrian Army and the Pentagon-backed Kurdish forces – against each other. The territory in brown is held by IS, the territory in green by Syrian Arab rebels (or “the mujahideen”, as the tweet describes them) and the territory in yellow by Kurdish forces. “That’s why we are in Jarablus, that’s why we are in Bashiqa (in Iraq)”.
Turkey has troops stationed in Bashiqa in northern Iraq, and it was not clear if his reference to Jarablus means he intends to base his troops there. Lindsey Graham whether the PYD and the YPG, are aligned with the PKK terrorist organization. In a statement Saturday, Kurdish forces accused Ankara of seeking to “expand its occupation” inside Syria. “Our operations against the separatist organization will continue without interruption”.
The Turkish-backed Nour el-din el-Zinki rebel group said fighters, backed by Turkish tanks, advanced Saturday on the village of Youssef Beik that lies southwest of Jarablus, seizing it from Kurdish-affiliated forces.
Ankara said it had killed 25 Kurdish “terrorists” and insisted the army was doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties.
Turkish-backed fighters will move south of Jarablus, toward Manbij and beyond, he said. The United States has considered the Kurdish-led militias its most reliable partner on the ground in the fight against the Islamic State. The YPG, however, has said its fighters have withdrawn from the targeted area.
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. He said the bombing also targeted Amarneh village. He said 50 Turkish tanks were taking part.
The Kurdish Democratic Union Party condemned the attack on the village. He also said Turkish-backed rebels were pushing west against IS.
Addressing a crowd in central Gaziantep – where 54 guests at a wedding party, including 34 children, were killed on August 20 – he said: “These betrayers will be drowned in the blood they shed…” Turkey is a leading backer of the rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Mohammed Khandakani, a hospital volunteer, said one of the injured told him a barrel bomb was dropped in the Bab al-Nairab neighborhood as people paid their condolences for children killed Thursday in an airstrike that left 11 children dead in the same neighborhood. Images of doctors treating other children for their burns were posted on social media sites.
The Syrian government and its Russian ally are the only ones operating helicopters over Aleppo.
The neighborhood, home to almost 75,000 people, has been under siege since March and has been one area that U.N agencies have reported hard to access.
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The escalation against the neighbourhood comes after the evacuation of Daraya, a Damascus suburb, following a deal struck with the government after a gruelling bombing campaign and a tight siege.
