Turkish Army hit village in Afrin with suspected gas, YPG militia says
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BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian Kurdish forces and a monitoring group say the Turkish military carried out a suspected gas attack that wounded six people in Syria’s Afrin region on Friday.
Birusk Hasaka, a spokesman for the Kurdish YPG militia in Afrin, told Reuters that Turkish bombardment hit a village in the northwest of the region, near the Turkish border. He said it caused six people to suffer breathing problems and other symptoms indicative of a gas attack.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Reuters that Turkish forces and their Syrian insurgent allies hit the village on Friday with shells. The Britain-based war monitoring group said medical sources in Afrin reported that six people in the attack suffered breathing difficulties and dilated pupils, indicating a suspected gas attack.
Syrian state news agency SANA, citing a doctor in an Afrin hospital, said Turkish shelling of the village caused choking in six people.
A Turkish diplomatic source said, however, that Turkey never used chemical weapons in its operations in Syria, and takes the utmost care of civilians.
“These are baseless accusations. Turkey never used chemical weapons. We take utmost care about civilians in Operation Olive Branch,” the source said.
The source described the accusations of wounding six civilians through a suspected gas attack as “black propaganda.”
Turkey began an air and ground offensive last month on the Afrin region, opening a new front in the multi-sided Syrian war to target Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.