Rebels take Syrian towns
Turkish airstrikes and tanks help to drive out IS forces in clashes
TURKEY-BACKED rebels seized a number of villages and towns from Kurdish-led forces in northern Syria yesterday amid Turkish airstrikes and shelling that killed at least 35 people, according to a monitoring group.
Turkey sent tanks across the border to help Syrian rebels drive the IS group out of the frontier town of Jarablus last week in an escalation of its involvement in the Syrian civil war.
The operation – labelled Euphrates Shield – is also aimed at pushing back US-allied Kurdish forces.
A Turkish soldier was killed by a Kurdish rocket attack late on Saturday, the first such fatality in the offensive.
Various factions of the Turkeybacked Syrian rebels said yesterday they have seized at least four villages and one town from Kurdish-led forces south of Jarablus.
One of the villages to change hands was Amarneh, where clashes had been fiercest.
Ankara is deeply suspicious of the Syrian Kurdish militia that dominates the US-backed Syria Democratic Forces, viewing it as an extension of the Kurdish insurgency raging in south-eastern Turkey.
Turkish leaders have vowed to drive both IS and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, away from the border. Turkey is part of the US-led coalition fighting IS but the airstrikes that began on Saturday marked the first time it has targeted Kurdish-led forces in Syria.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the bombing killed at least 20 civilians and four Kurdish-led fighters in Beir Khoussa, a village about nine miles south of Jarablus, and another 15 in a village to the west.
The attack came as fighting elsewhere in Syria was said to have left more than 30 dead.
Activists said government war planes targeted a besieged area in the central city of Homs with incendiary bombs that killed two children and left one badly burned.
Hayyan, a doctor and Homs resident whose parents remain in the al-Waer neighbuorhood, said the government launched 18 air strikes on Saturday, the last two of which dropped incendiary bombs. Hayyan, who runs a volunteer group in the province, refused to be identified further due to concerns for his and his family’s safety. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a brother and sister were killed in the air strikes.
Al-Waer is the last rebel-held area in Homs, Syria’s third largest city. It has been besieged for months with only intermittent international aid deliveries getting through.
And at least 15 civilians have been killed in a barrel-bomb attack on a wake being held for children who died in earlier air strikes in the rebelheld Syrian city of Aleppo.
Hospital officials said suspected government helicopters dropped bombs in the Bab al-Nairab area. It is feared the death toll will increase.
Mohammed Khandakani, a hospital volunteer, said one of those injured told him a barrel bomb was dropped as people paid their respects to 11 children killed on Thursday in an air strike in the same area. The Syrian government and its Russian ally are the only ones operating helicopters over Aleppo. The government denies it uses barrel bombs.