At least 20 civilians were killed and 50 others injured in Turkish air strikes and artillery fire in Syria on Sunday (28 August), the fifth day of the offensive against Islamic State (Isis) and Kurdish forces, a monitor group said.
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Turkey’s military said its warplanes killed 25 Kurdish “terrorists” and destroyed five buildings used by the fighters in response to attacks on advancing Turkish-backed rebels in the Jarablus area.
The monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Sunday that at least 35 civilians were killed south of Jarablus during fighting between Turkish-backed forces and rival Kurdish-aligned Syrian militias.
The Turkish Air Force is inflicting air strikes on the positions of the YPG (Kurdish People’s Protection Units) in Syria, Milliyet newspaper reported August 28. Ankara has said that the offensive it began in Syria is as much about fighting Isis as it is about preventing Kurdish forces from making territorial gains in Syria along the Turkish border.
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A Syrian rebel commander said on Sunday that Turkish-backed rebels aimed to capture Manbij. 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.
The clashes underscore the complexity of the US -led worldwide coalition campaign to reverse Islamic State’s territorial hold in Syria and the dangers faced in that mission.
It has ordered the YPG, a well-trained force that has been the US-led coalition’s most effective ground partner in the war against ISIL, to withdraw to the east bank of the Euphrates River, which crosses the Syria-Turkey border at Jarablus.
An Associated Press reporter in the Turkish border town of Karkamis spotted at least three Turkish jets flying into Syria amid heavy Turkish shelling from inside Syrian territory on Sunday morning. The YPG, however, has said its fighters have withdrawn from the targeted area. Most fighting so far has appeared to be with rebels aligned to the Kurdish-backed SDF rather than Islamic State.
Turkey has suffered shock waves from the conflict raging in its southern neighbour, including frequent bomb attacks by Islamic State.
The Jarablus Military Council, an affiliate of the SDF, said their fighters were targeted, and described the attack as an “unprecedented and unsafe escalation”. The government suspects the jihadist group was behind a blast at a wedding this month that killed 54 people.
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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 today.
