HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF SYRIAN CIVILIANS AT RISK IN AFRIN OFFENSIVE
UN refugee agency says as many as 322,000 people face death or displacement and that 5,000 have already fled
Hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians were yesterday reported to be at risk as the Turkish president vowed to continue his country’s five-day incursion into north Syria until “the last terrorist is neutralised”.
The United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR) said as many as 322,000 people in and around the city of Afrin were at risk of being killed or displaced, and that 5,000 had fled homes.
Citizens were sheltering in caves while others moved toward the city of Afrin from its outskirts under what was described as the worst shelling by the Turkish military since the fighting began.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said the offensive was “continuing successfully”, and that Ankara-backed Syrian opposition fighters and Turkish forces were “step by step taking control of Afrin”.
The US president, Donald Trump, was expected to raise concerns about the operation in a phone call to Mr Erdogan yesterday.
The Turkish campaign “detracts from efforts to fight the Islamic State group”, a senior US administration official said.
In recent days, Russian, French and US officials have all called on Turkey to show restraint in its assault against the YPG. Ankara considers the YPG a terrorist group because of its links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency against the Turkish government since the 1980s.
But the YPG is also the United States’ closest ally in Syria and played a significant part in the victory against ISIL, which has been driven from most of the territory it previously held in the country. The group dominates the Syrian Democratic Forces, a militia the US continues to support with weapons and training.
US troops are stationed in Syria to the east of the Euphrates River, more than 100 kilometres from Afrin. Mr Erdogan has threatened to send his troops to that area, but it is far from clear whether he will.
Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Bekir Bozdag, said he did not think Turkish troops would come face to face with American troops as Ankara carries out military operations in Syria.
He said that Turkey was ready for all kinds of co-operation with the US and Russia if that brought peace to the region.
The enclave the YPG controls around Afrin is cut off from the larger contiguous territory held by the YPG and SDF farther east and already surrounded by Turkey’s Syrian Arab militia allies. Nonetheless, Ankara appears in for a tough fight against an estimated 8,000 YPG fighters who are also rallying local civilians to pick up arms.
Mr Erdogan has said ISIL fighters around Afrin are also the target of Turkey’s operation, although there have been no credible reports of such a presence.
The Turkish military claimed on Tuesday to have killed at least 260 YPG and ISIL fighters since the operation began.
Muataz Raslan, an officer in Jaish Al Nukhba, a rebel group that is part of the Euphrates Shield, an alliance of Turkish-supported Free Syrian Army factions, said the offensive had slowed somewhat yesterday owing to inclement weather.
As of yesterday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Turkish shelling and air strikes in Afrin had killed 28 civilians, while two civilians had been killed near the Syrian opposition-held town of Azaz as a result of shelling by the YPG.
The Observatory, a Britain-based monitoring group, said 48 FSA fighters had been killed and that the death toll among the YPG was so far at 42.
Turkey says that two of its soldiers have been killed.
Merve Tahiroglu, a Turkish analyst with the Foundation for Defence of Democracies told Agence France-Presse that he believed Turkey’s offensive was launched after striking some kind of deal with Russia, which has entered the Syrian war on behalf of President Bashar Al Assad’s government and has also supported Kurdish factions.