Turkey shells Syria’s Afrin region, minister says operation has begun

SUGEDIGI, Turkey: Turkish artillery fired into Syria’s Afrin region on Friday in what Ankara said was the start of a military campaign against the Kurdishcontrolled area.

The cross-border bombardment took place after days of threats from Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to crush the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia in Afrin in response to growing Kurdish strength across a wide stretch of north Syria.

“The operation has actually de facto started with cross-border shelling,” Turkish Defence Minister Nurettin Canikli said, adding that no troops had crossed into Afrin.

Direct military action against territory held by Kurdish militia would open a new front in Syria’s civil war and would see Ankara confronting Kurds allied to the United States at a time when Turkey’s relations with Washington are reaching the breaking point.

The US State Department has called on Turkey to focus on the fight against IS militants and not take military action in Afrin.

Reuters TV filmed Turkish artillery at the border village of Sugedigi firing on Friday morning into Afrin region, and the YPG militia said Turkish forces fired 70 shells at Kurdish villages between midnight and Friday morning. Shelling continued in the late afternoon, said Rojhat Roj, a YPG spokesman in Afrin.

Roj said it was the heaviest Turkish bombardment since Ankara stepped up threats to take military action against the Kurdish region.

“YPG is ready to confront Turkish troops and FSA terrorists. If they dare to attack, we are ready to bury them one by one in Afrin,” a YPG statement said. But Canikli said Ankara was determined to destroy the Kurdish group. “All terror networks and elements in northern Syria will be eliminated. There is no other way,” he said.

“The operation in central Afrin may last a long time, but the terrorist organisation will swiftly come undone there.”

Although Canikli said no Turkish troops have gone into Afrin, Turkish newspapers said 20 buses carrying Free Syrian Army rebels crossed on Friday from Turkey into a Turkish-controlled part of northern Syria, on Afrin’s eastern flank.

14 HURT AS HOSPITAL HIT: Mortar fire on a town in northern Syria held by rebels wounded at least 14 people in a psychiatric hospital, a monitor said on Friday.

The Thursday evening fire on the town of Azaz just across the border from Turkey came after Ankara bombarded the adjacent Afrin.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor of the war, said the mortar rounds were fired by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed alliance dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that the IS group in Syria and Iraq would be defeated militarily “in the coming weeks,” as he laid out plans for bolstering France’s defence capabilities.

“Today, thanks to the efforts of all the nations involved, the Daesh military organisation in the Levant is almost completely defeated,” Macron said in a speech aboard a helicopter carrier in the southern port of Toulon, using an Arabic acronym for IS.