Syrian Arab fighters move to Afrin from ISIL fronts

Kurdish-allied Syrian Arab militias are redeploying fighters from fronts against ISIL to the Afrin region to help fend off a Turkish offensive, they said yesterday.

“We have taken out about 1,700 fighters ... to defend Afrin against terrorism,” said Abu Omar Al Edilbi, the spokesman for militias that have been fighting in eastern Syria as part of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

Mr Al Edilbi said that 700 of the fighters had already gone to Afrin in north-west Syria. They were moving from frontlines farther east, where the Kurdish-led SDF seized territory from ISIL militants last year with the help of US jets and special forces.

“We are [originally] from Aleppo and Idlib,” he said. “We had to [move] because our families were homeless and displaced to Afrin more than three years ago. We had to [redeploy fighters] and we informed our leadership that we must pull our forces.”

The Pentagon said on Monday that Turkey’s offensive against US-backed forces in Syria had affected the fight against ISIL and led to an “operational pause” in the east.

Pentagon spokesman Col Robert Manning said some SDF ground operations had temporarily halted.

Turkey launched its assault on Afrin in January to drive out the YPG, whose members it regards as terrorists with links to a Kurdish insurgency at home.

Also yesterday, a Russian military cargo plane crashed as it was landing at an air base in Syria, killing all 32 people on board, the Russian Defence Ministry said. The Russian military said an An-26, with 26 passengers and six crew members, crashed just 500 metres from the runway. The military blamed the crash on a technical error.

Russia, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, leases the Hemeimeem military base in Syria, near the Mediterranean coast. The base is far from the front lines of the conflict, but was shelled in December. The Russian military said the plane did not come under fire, but that it would conduct a full investigation.

It was the second Russian military plane to crash in Syria this year, after an Su-25 ground attack jet was hit by an air defence missile over Idlib province last month.