Following the initial Thursday incident, the coalition began “actively patrolling the airspace nearby”, a Defense Department official said.
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In Friday’s aerial encounter, the US pilots tried to contact the Syrian pilots by radio but there was no response.
The development prompted jets from the US-led coalition battling the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq to intervene in order to protect Kurdish forces working alongside U.S. advisors, a Pentagon spokesman said Friday.
Local media reported that government jets carried out air strikes again on Saturday morning and that fighting continue to rage on the ground. “We will ensure their safety and the Syrian regime would be well-advised not to do things that place them at risk”.
While the Russian aerospace forces have been invited by the government in Damascus, the presence of USA forces in Syria is not authorized under worldwide law.
Navy Capt. Jeff Davis on Friday said that the USA has warned Syria that America will defend coalition troops. Social-media reports indicated that several Kurds were killed in the bombing.
No U.S. forces were wounded during the Syrian bombing, according to officials.
As soon as Thursday’s strike began, ground forces tried to hail pilots via radio – to no avail. The coalition aircraft are now conducting more patrols in the area.
The attack in the Hasakah area has deeply unsettled Pentagon officials.
The other one is that in going against the PKK, the Syrian army may be showing us that there is the beginning of a durable agreement to fight terrorism between Ankara and Damascus.
A direct clash between USA forces and Syria’s military would have led to unpredictable consequences, given Mr. Assad’s alliance with Iran and Russian Federation. He underscored it is well known that USA forces are in the area.
They came after heavy clashes broke out on Wednesday between Kurdish fighters who control two-thirds of the city and pro-government militia who control the rest.
Washington’s search for reliable proxies in Syria, and in particular the Pentagon’s choice of the Kurdish YPG as a suitable candidate, ultimately united a wide coalition of countries against it. The government still has a foothold in the cities of Hasaka and Qamishli.
Hassakeh is mainly under the control of a Kurdish militia, the YPG. According to USA officials, the American forces were moved to a safer position after the attack, but weren’t pulled entirely from the theater. We were surprised. In the military areas they hit Asayish (a security force linked to the YPG) but in the civilian areas…
Karasik said Russia, Iran and Turkey have concluded that “the empowerment of Kurdish factions, especially those (trained and supported) by the US”, is a threat, and that those Kurdish militias “must be put in check” with some deterrence of their on-the-ground support systems.
Events during the week have also been cited to buttress additional theories about increasing Turkish cooperation with Russia after the healing of a rift between those two governments was consolidated by the visit of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this month to Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Claims that their intervention is aimed at fighting Islamist terror groups, which evolved out of militias they supported against the Assad regime, are a political fraud.
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“Russia had been flirting with the Kurds”, he said.
