The bombardments came after Ankara suffered its first military fatality since it launched the two-pronged offensive against the Islamic State group and Syrian Kurdish militia inside Syria on Wednesday.
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Reuters reported that the Jarablus Military Council – which is allied to the US-backed, Kurdish-led SDF – said Turkish aircraft attacked a village south of Jarablus, called al-Amarna, causing civilian casualties and conducting what the council called a “a unsafe escalation that threatens the fate of the region”.
Turkey sees the US-backed PYD and YPG – which have links to Kurdish rebels in southeast Turkey – as terror groups and wants to keep them from taking control of the border on the Syrian side.
Turkish security sources said warplanes and artillery had hit YPG sites south of Jarablus and towards Manbij, a city captured by the SDF this month in a US-backed operation.
A Syria monitoring group and a spokesman for a Kurdish-led force say Turkish airstrikes and shelling have killed as many as 20 civilians in northern Syria.
Turkey has warned that its offensive in Syria is targeted against the Kurdish militia as well as Islamic State (IS) jihadists, warning the YPG to retreat from its recent advances.
Turkey is part of the USA -led coalition fighting the militants of the Islamic State group, but the airstrikes that began Saturday marked the first time it has targeted Kurdish-led forces in Syria.
But the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 40 civilians were killed in strikes on two areas – the first report of significant civilian casualties since the start of operation “Euphrates Shield”.
Last week, the Turkish army launched a cross-border operation with the help of the US-led coalition forces to drive out the IS terrorists from its border following the Gaziantep suicide attack that killed at least 55 persons and series of mortar attacks targeting the Karkamis district.
Turkey said the dead were 25 “terrorists” from the YPG and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), state-run Anadolu news agency said. Both Turkey and the United States have ordered the YPG to withdraw to the east bank of the river.
The fighting killed 20 civilians in Jub al-Kousa and 15 in al-Amarna, while scores more were wounded, the group said.
Turkish officials say their goal in Syria is as much about ensuring Kurdish forces do not expand the territory they already control along Turkey’s border as it is about driving Islamic State from its strongholds.
The Jarablus Military Council is supported by the US -backed and Kurdish-led Syria Democratic Forces.
Turkish media named the dead soldier as Ercan Celik, 28, and said a funeral for him would be held on Sunday in Gaziantep, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is now visiting. Turkey is a leading backer of the rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The UN has stopped officially tracking the death toll in Syria.
On Saturday, the last rebel fighters were evacuated from Daraya just outside the Syrian capital Damascus, under a plan to end a brutal four-year siege of the town that brought the population to the brink of starvation.
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Hundreds of fighters and their families were bused north into rebel-held territory in Idlib province, with other civilians transferred to government territory near Damascus for resettlement.
