Turkey opened a new front in the Syrian war on Saturday and launched air strikes on US-backed Kurdish protection units in the Afrin region, raising the prospect of heightened tensions between Ankara and Washington, allies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
The Turks launched the new operation, Operation Olive Branch, in which Ankara faces Kurdish fighters allied to the United States as relations between Turkey and Washington, members of the alliance against the Islamic state organization, are on the verge of collapse.
The Turkish army said the strikes had hit about 108 targets for units protecting the Syrian Kurdish people. A senior Turkish official said the Free Syrian Army, an armed Syrian opposition group backed by Turkey, also supports the Turkish military operation in Afrin.
“The area is being weakened by artillery,” Prime Minister Ben Ali Yildirim said. The first phase was carried out by the air force and almost all targets were destroyed. ”
He said ground forces would begin on Sunday “necessary activities” based on developments in the region.
A spokesman for Kurdish People’s Protection Units in the Afrin region said Turkish air strikes killed six civilians and three fighters.
“One of the dead belongs to the units, while the other two belong to a contingent of all the women,” spokesman Brosak Hasaka told Reuters, adding that the raids also wounded 13 civilians.
“We will defeat this aggression and defeat other aggressions against our villages and cities,” the units said in a statement.
Differences over the crisis in Syria have soured relations already strained between Turkey and the United States, allies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Washington supported the people’s protection units as an effective partner in the war against the Islamic state.
The US response to the strikes was cautious.
The Pentagon has urged the parties to focus instead on fighting the Islamic state. “We encourage all sides to avoid escalation and focus on the most important task of defeating the Islamic state,” a Pentagon spokesman said.
A State Department official said Foreign Secretary Rex Tilerson spoke to his Russian and Turkish counterparts without giving further details on the talks.
The attacks could also complicate Turkey’s efforts to improve relations with Russia. The Russian news agency quoted a member of the Security Committee of the Russian parliament as saying that Moscow will ask at the United Nations to stop Turkey process.
The Syrian government condemned the “brutal Turkish aggression” on the city of Afrin and said that the city is an integral part of Syrian territory.
– Military aircraft and buses –
Roghat Rouge, media officer of the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit in Afrin, said warplanes bombed areas in Afrin and surrounding villages while there were still skirmishes with Turkish troops and their allies from the Syrian armed opposition on the outskirts of Afrin.
Authorities in the Afrin region say at least one million people live in Afrin. Many of them were displaced from other areas.
“Most of the wounded are civilians,” said Hefei Mustafa, head of the self-governing authority in Afrin. “There are clashes and shelling with guns and shells. And our units respond to this occupation in a fierce manner.”
Reuters photographers in Hasa, near the border with Syria, heard heavy bombardments and saw thick columns of smoke rising from the Syrian side of the border. One of the photographers said the warplanes appeared to be striking from the Turkish side of the border.
Tankers and buses carrying Turkish soldiers and trucks carrying members of the Syrian-backed Free Syrian Army are making their way on a 15-km highway in Turkey towards the border, the photographer said.
Villages in nearby towns were released to cheer and flag Turkish flags. Some villagers shouted in support of “the best soldiers of our soldiers”.
The attacks came weeks after threats by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his government to the Syrian People’s Protection Units. Turkey regards the people’s protection units as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which took up arms for three decades in southeastern Turkey.
Turkey was particularly angered by the announcement by the United States of its intention to train 30,000 people in the eastern region of Syria under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces, whose main component is the People’s Protection Units.
The growing influence of people’s protection units in large parts of northern Syria has worried Ankara, which fears an independent Kurdish state on its southern border. Kurdish leaders say they seek autonomy within the Syrian state and do not seek secession.
Turkish officials said the operation would probably continue towards Manbaj to the east. They also said thousands of pro-Turkish civilians fled areas under the control of Kurdish People’s Protection Units in an attempt to reach Aleppo.
– Growing power –
But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war watchdog, denied the residents had fled.
The Pentagon spokesman said the United States acknowledged Turkey’s security concerns over the PKK, saying Washington was classifying it as a terrorist organization.
The Turkish military said the military operation in Afrin was aimed at securing the Turkish border and “eliminating the terrorists … and rescuing friends and brothers from the region.”
“We will gradually destroy the terrorist corridor as we did in the operations of Grapels and the door from the west,” Erdogan said, referring to previous operations in northern Syria aimed at expelling the Islamic state and stopping the advance of the Kurdish people’s protection units.
Earlier on Saturday, the Turkish army said it had targeted shelters and hideouts used by public protection units and other Kurdish fighters, noting that Kurdish militants had fired on positions inside Turkey.
But Syria’s pro-US democracy forces, whose main component is the People’s Protection Units, accused Turkey on Saturday of using the cross-border bombardment as an excuse to attack them in Syria.
A US State Department official said on Friday that Turkish military intervention in Syria would undermine stability in the region and would not help protect the security of the Turkish border.
He called on Turkey to focus instead on fighting the Islamic state. Ankara accused Washington of using a terrorist group to fight another group in Syria.
