Turkey, rebel allies lost hundreds in Afrin fighting
Turkey and its Free Syrian Army FSA allies launched the operation, dubbed Olive Branch by Ankara, in January and have since swept the Syrian Kurdish YPG from the Arfin region
ISTANBUL: qurkey and its pyrian rebel allies have lost “hundreds” of fighters in total since the start of a campaign in northwest Syria three months ago, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday, with the rebels suffering the bulk of the losses.
Turkey and its Free Syrian Army (FSA) allies launched the operation, dubbed “Olive Branch” by Ankara, in January and have since swept the Syrj ian Kurdish YPG from the Afrin region.
Erdogan has previously threatened to push further east, a move that would ratchet up tension in Syria’s multisided conflict.
“Alongside our 56 martyrs, the FSA army had hundreds of martyrs,” Erdoj gan told Turkey’s NTV in an interview broadcast live.
Turkey sees the YPG as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), considered a terrorist group by the United States and Europe. The PKK has waged a three-decade insurgency in Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast that has left some 40,000 people dead.
qhe United ptates has trained and backed the YPG militia in the fight against Daesh in Syria. That support has infuriated Erdogan and strained ties between Washington and Ankara, both NATO allies and members of the coalition against Daesh.
In an unrelated development, a family of three was killed late on Saturday in a wave of regime shelling on a southern district of Syria’s capital held by the Daesh group, a monitor said.
Syrian troops are waging an intense bombing campaign against Yarmuk, a Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Damascus, and nearby districts that are held by Daesh.
A woman, her husband, and their child were killed in the Yarmuk shelling, the Britainjbased pyrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday.
“This brings to nine the number of civilians killed since the shelling escaj lated on Thursday,” said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.
The bombing and clashes conj tinued into Sunday, Abdel Rahman said, with air strikes, artillery, and surface-to-surface missiles hitting the neighbourhood.
Y ar mu kw as once a dense ly-populated and thriving district of the capital, but it has been ravaged by violence since Syria’s conflict broke out in 2011.
Syria’s government imposed a cripj pling siege on it in 2012, and fighting among rebels and rival extremists has exhausted residents.