‘Terrorists killed’ claim as Turkey strikes in Syria
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TURKEY’S shelling and airstrikes killed at least 40 Syrians yesterday, in the first significant civilian casualties in the nation’s intensifying campaign in northern Syria.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said yesterday the army had killed 25 Kurdish terrorists in airstrikes as part of its unprecedented operation inside Syria.
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 last Wednesday.
At least 20 civilians were killed and 50 wounded in Turkish artillery fire and airstrikes on the village of Jeb el-Kussa, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
Another 20 were killed and 25 wounded, many seriously, in Turkish airstrikes near the town of Al-Amarneh, it said.
The monitor said at least four Kurdish fighters had been killed and 15 injured in Turkish bombardment of the two areas.
A spokesman for the local Kurdish administration said 75 people had been killed in both villages.
The Britain-based Observatory said the bombardment targeted an area south of the former IS border stronghold of Jarabulus, which Turkish-led forces captured on the first day of the incursion.
Fighting has since intensified south of the town, where clashes erupted between Turkish troops and forces belonging to the Kurdish Democratic Union (PYD) party, which Ankara considers a terrorist group linked with Kurdish militants in Turkey.
US-backed Kurdish forces have been fighting IS in Syria but Turkey fiercely opposes any move by Kurds to expand into territory lost by the jihadists.
The latest fighting is likely to raise deep concerns for Turkey’s NATO ally the United States, which supports the Kurdish militia — known as the People’s Protection Units — as an effective fighting force against IS.
A Turkish soldier was killed and three more wounded on Saturday in a rocket attack by Kurdish militia on two tanks taking part in an offensive against the pro-Kurdish forces south of Jarabulus.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was due to visit the city yesterday to express condolences for last weekend’s suicide bombing there at a Kurdish wedding that left 54 dead.
Turkey’s NTV television reported that Turkish artillery had struck YPG targets throughout the night and that Turkish warplanes had carried out new bombing sorties in the morning.
Turkish forces carried out their first airstrikes on pro-Kurdish positions on Saturday as part of what Ankara is calling “Operation Euphrates Shield.”
Turkey says that the YPG — which it regards as the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — has failed to stick to a promise to return across the Euphrates River after advancing west this month, despite guarantees given by Washington.
Ankara fears the emergence of a contiguous autonomous Kurdish region in Syria would bolster the PKK rebels across the border in southeast Turkey.
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 2011.
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