Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish force an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, a domestic group that Ankara has declared a terrorist organization.
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An opposition monitoring group and a news agency linked with the Islamic State group say a suicide attacker has targeted Turkish-backed rebels in northern Syria.
The extremist group has suffered a string of defeats in recent weeks, including in Syria’s northern Aleppo province, where Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebels drove IS out of the border town of Jarablus last week.
In recent days, Turkish forces have attacked Syrian Kurds aligned with the USA, saying they had failed to move east of the Euphrates Rivers.
On Tuesday, the Kurdish-backed Jarablus Military Council said in a statement that it had agreed to a cease-fire with the Turkish military in a disputed area in northern Syria after lengthy consultations with the coalition.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday as he departed for the G20 meeting in China, “they tell us that YPG (a Syrian Kurdish force) has crossed east of the Euphrates”.
The Pentagon says Kurdish forces have already moved east of the Euphrates, in compliance with Turkish and US demands. But then clashes broke out with the Kurds.
Turkey has demanded that Kurdish forces withdraw to the east of the Euphrates River, which would include a pullout from Manbij, where the Kurds took heavy casualties in months of fighting with IS over the summer.
Vice President Joe Biden said last week during a visit to Turkey that the Kurdish forces must withdraw or risk losing USA support. The Kurdish-led forces, aided by airstrikes from the U.S-led coalition, repelled the attack initially but Darwish says clashes continued on Tuesday.
Earlier this month, Manbij fell out of ISIS control, a major loss for the terror group.
Three American citizens who traveled to Syria to fight alongside Kurdish forces battling the self-proclaimed Islamic State died in combat, two US defense officials confirmed to the Daily Beast. The villages are situated west of the border town of Jarablus, which was retaken by Turkey-backed Syrian rebels last week. “We have no additional information to offer at this time”, John Kirby, U.S. State Department spokesman, said in a statement to The Daily Beast. US officials have since called on both sides to stand down, fearing that the conflict could undermine efforts to battle IS. The U.S. similarly designates the PKK, but not the YPG.
The construction of the wall at Kobani began after Ankara sent tanks and warplanes into Syria to push advancing Kurdish fighters, as well as Islamic State group militants, from its borders.
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Hollande called for cooperation with Russia and said he would invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to France in October, saying Russia should be “a player in negotiations, not a protagonist in the action”.
