Spoils of war
Turkish-backed forces seize control of Afrin in northern Syria from the Kurdish militia with Syrian Arab soldiers reportedly looting the war-torn city.
AFRIN: Turkey’s flag was flying over Afrin after its troops and Ankarabacked rebels chased out Kurdish militia forces to seize control of the Syrian city.
In a major victory for Ankara’s twomonth operation against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northern Syria, Turkishled forces pushed into Afrin apparently unopposed, taking up positions across the city on Sunday.
The advance came as Syria’s civil war entered its eighth year this week with heavy fighting on two fronts – around Afrin and in the rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus.
Hundreds have been killed and thousands forced from their homes by the assault in Ghouta, where President Bashar alAssad on Sunday visited troops battling to retake the last rebel enclave close to the capital.
In Afrin, AFP correspondents saw Turkish forces and their Syrian allies in all neighbourhoods of the city after they made a lightning advance inside.
Rebels fanned out across the city, giving victory signs and taking pictures with Turkish tanks parked outside official buildings. But celebration soon appeared to turn to retribution and looting as proAnkara rebels began pillaging goods and a statue of a Kurdish hero was torn down.
Fighters were seen breaking into shops and houses before hauling off foodstuff, electronic equipment, blankets and other goods in trucks.
As Turkey and its allies forces arrived to cement control over Afrin, civilians continued to flee the city.
Around 250,000 civilians left in recent days after proAnkara fighters took the surrounding region and all but encircled the city, fleeing southwards to territory still held by the YPG or controlled by the Syrian regime.
On Sunday, 13 proTurk fighters were killed by landmines during search operations in Afrin, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkishbacked fighters had taken control of the city centre and that a “large number” of Kurdish fighters had “fled with their tails between their legs”.
Erdogan has said the operation could move on to other Kurdishcontrolled areas of northern Syria.
Residents said it appeared that YPG units had withdrawn from the city without a fight. But Kurdish authorities vowed to retake Afrin, one of three semiautonomous Kurdish “cantons” in northern Syria.
“Resistance ... will continue until every inch of Afrin is liberated,” authorities representing the Afrin canton said in a statement.
“In all of Afrin’s sectors, our forces will become a permanent nightmare” for proAnkara fighters, the statement said, promising “a switch from direct confrontation to hitandrun attacks”.
The Observatory, a Britainbased war monitor, says more than 280 civilians have been killed since the campaign began on Jan 20.
Ankara has denied the reports and said it took the “utmost care” to avoid civilian casualties.
The Observatory said on Sunday that other 1,500 Kurdish fighters had been killed since the start of the offensive.
Over 400 proAnkara rebels had also been killed, it said, while the Turkish military said 46 soldiers had died.
Turkey sees the YPG as a “terrorist” offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has waged a decadeslong insurgency against the Turkish state.
But the Kurdish militia has also formed the backbone of a USbacked alliance that expelled the Islamic State group from large parts of Syria.
On another front near Damascus, thousands of civilians continued to stream out of Eastern Ghouta for a fourth day as the regime’s Russianbacked air and ground assault appeared to have eased up.
Regime fighters have retaken more than 80% of the former rebel bastion since the offensive was launched on Feb 18, the Observatory says, slicing what remains into three pockets, each held by different rebel groups.
Over 1,400 civilians have been killed in the offensive and at least 65,000 civilians are reported to have fled the area in recent days. — AFP