US allies at odds as Turks and Kurds clash in Syria
TURKISH tanks and attack aircraft have clashed with Kurdish-led forces in northern Syria, just hours after hopes were raised about a new general ceasefire in the war-torn country.
Fighters aligned with the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led alliance that is supported by the United States, engaged Turkish forces, including tanks and Ankara-backed Syrian rebels, south of the border town of Jarablus yesterday afternoon.
Nour el-din el-Zinki, an Ankarabacked rebel group, claimed it captured a village and took two Kurdish prisoners during the clashes.
Earlier Turkish jets bombed an ammunition dump and command centre for “terror groups”, Ankara said, on the fourth day of an intervention designed to clear the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) from border areas and contain Kurdish expansion.
The Jarablus Military Council group, which is allied to the SDF, said a Turkish air strike in the village of al-Amarna caused civilian casualties and called it “a dangerous escalation that threatens the fate of the region”. Turkish forces and allied Syrian rebels entered Syria and seized Jarablus from Isil on Wednesday, in an operation dubbed “Euphrates Shield.”
Turkey appears to have rapidly expanded its forces there since, with local media reporting 50 tanks and 380 personnel inside Syria after three days of operations. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, has made clear that the offensive is also aimed at reversing recent Kurdish territorial gains and has demanded the SDF withdraw east of the Euphrates river.
SDF units crossed the Euphrates in a US-backed operation to liberate the Isil stronghold of Manbij last month. The Turkish intervention appears to have been prompted in part by fears the SDF might also liberate Jarablus.
The SDF, which is spearheaded by the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish militia, has been lauded by both Russia and the West as one of the most effective forces fighting Isil, and has received extensive US support.
Turkey considers the YPG a branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party, a group that has fought a three decade insurgency against the Turkish state, and is determined to prevent the group establishing an autonomous region in northern Syria. The US has struggled to balance its alliance with Syrian Kurds and Turkey, a key Nato ally.
However, Joe Biden, the US vicepresident, appeared to take the Turkish side on Wednesday, when he warned the SDF could lose support if it did not honour what he said was a commitment to withdraw eastwards.
The clashes in Syria’s north came just a day after US and Russian diplomats said they had taken key steps towards a renewed ceasefire in Syria.
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, and Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said they had achieved “clarity on the path forward” after 12 hour talks in Geneva on Friday, but declined to announce details for a cessation of hostilities. He added that the “vast majority” of technical obstacles to a ceasefire had been agreed but that some issues remained unresolved.
Russia and the US are trying to hammer out an agreement on combining military efforts against Isil, achieving a 48-hour ceasefire in Aleppo, Syria’s second city, and restarting stalled UNbrokered peace talks in Geneva.
The UN on Friday described the lack of humanitarian access to Syria’s besieged areas as “wholly unacceptable”. Up to 300,000 civilians are said to be trapped in Aleppo amid fierce fighting between rebel groups and government forces backed by Russian air strikes.
At least 15 civilians were killed when regime forces dropped barrel bombs on Aleppo yesterday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group.