Their expansion has alarmed Ankara, which sees the YPG as linked to militant Kurdish groups waging an insurgency in southern Turkey, and worries that its success will embolden separatist sentiments at home.
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A statement from Turkey’s military, reported by Anadolu, said that the offensive was being carried out in accordance with global law and the United Nations’ mandate of self-defense.
However, Turkey’s offensive has so far focused mostly on targeting forces allied to the Kurdish-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition that includes YPG, an Observatory source said.
At least 20 civilians have been killed in strikes in northern Syria as part of a Turkish campaign that started in the area this week, a monitoring group reports.
Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have retaken control of five villages near Jarablus from IS forces.
Footage by Sky News shows Turkish-backed rebels in Syria firing on Kurdish position and Turkish tanks inside of Syria.
On Sunday, two separate blasts in the Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated southeast killed one Turkish soldier and wounded eight others, and Kurdish militants launched a rocket-propelled grenade at a civilian airport, officials and the state-run news agency said. YPG leaders say they have, but their units play an advisory role to the SDF and it is not clear if any of their forces remain west of the Euphrates. Syrian rebels on Saturday said they had captured several villages, south of Jarablus, from Isis and Kurdish forces. Vocativ found that the hashtag #TurkeyToStopCivilianSlaying was trending on Sunday in Turkey, as people accused Ankara of invading Syria in “last attempts to save ISIS”.
In the Turkey’s southeastern city of Diyarbakir late on August 27, PKK fighters launched four rocket attacks on a military air base used by both Turkish and US forces.
Ankara considers the YPG a “terrorist” group and has fiercely opposed its bid to expand into areas recaptured from ISIS to create a contiguous autonomous zone.
Turkey, he said, also is determined to “uproot” the Syrian Kurdish group, calling it a terrorist organization.
President Tayyip Erdogan is expected to visit the site of that wedding attack in Gaziantep, in southeastern Turkey, to pay his respects to families of the victims later on Sunday. “They want us to think that if we hold funerals for them, we will risk death, too”, said Abdulkafi al- Hamdo, an English teacher from Aleppo who shared images of the dead with reporters.
The campaign marked the first outright military intervention by the Turkish army in the quagmire of the Syrian war.
Operations against DAESH terrorist group in northern Syria continue.
Russia, which backs Assad’s forces, has endorsed the proposal.
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But some rebel groups have rejected the plan unless aid passes through opposition-held areas and the ceasefire applies to other areas of Syria under siege.
