The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said Turkish airstrikes and artillery shelling killed at least 20 civilians and wounded dozens during a fierce overnight battle for a village. “Turkish sources say he was killed in an attack by [Kurdish] YPG fighters”. It was the first Turkish death reported in Turkey’s campaign.
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Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said Sunday that Turkish airstrikes killed 25 Kurdish “terrorists” and destroyed five buildings where the fighters were firing at advancing rebels.
Turkey’s military said 25 Kurdish militants were killed in its air strikes.
The military clashes between Kurdish and Turkish forces in Syria have put Turkey and the United States at odds as Washington regards Kurdish fighters as its most effective ally against IS forces in Syria.
AFP said Turkey on Saturday sent six more tanks into Syria as pro-Ankara forces pressed on with de-mining work in the Syrian town of Jarablus, captured from ISIS this week.
Faylaq al-Sham also posted a map of the situation in Syria to the west of the Euphrates River (in black, on the right). The initial goal of the operation was to clear Jarablus, along the Syria-Turkey border, of Islamic State positions and mop up any fighters that escaped Manbij, which is approximately 20 miles further south.
Any action against Kurdish forces in Syria puts Turkey at odds with its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally the United States, which backs the SDF and YPG, seeing them as the most reliable and effective ally in the fight against Islamic State in Syria.
“We’re now seeing US-supplied weaponry being used by both sides, to fight each other”.
Ankara’s military intervention in Syria has added another dimension to the country’s complex multi-front war, a devastating conflict that has killed more than 290,000 people and forced millions from their homes since it began in March 2011.
One of the villages to change hands was Amarneh, where clashes erupted for the first time between Turkish forces backed by tanks and pro-Kurdish fighters on Saturday. SDF-allied militia damaged three Turkish tanks, it said.
Ankara says that the YPG has failed to stick to a promise made by its USA allies that the militia would move back east across the Euphrates following the seizure of the town of Manbij from Daesh earlier this month.
Escalating tensions between Turkish armed forces and Syrian Kurdish rebels in the newest battlefront of the complex war may endanger US forces in the area and complicate their mission to eradicate IS, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Turkey considers the armed Kurdish militants terrorists, too.
Turkish forces deny that any of their military vehicles have entered Kobani; rather, they say their forces are protecting construction vehicles as they dig the foundation for a border wall adjacent to the city.
Members of Turkish-backed FSA carry out a house to house search in Jarabulus left by DAESH terrorists in Syria, August 26, 2016.
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That latest fighting came after suspected Kurdish fighters launched rockets at an airport in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir.
