Kurds run from Turkish border
Retreat as Trump hails cease-fire deal
Kurdish militias on Friday began retreating south of the 20mile buffer zone in northern Syria that Turkey had demanded — after a morning of continued fighting, Turkish authorities said.
The skirmishes happened as Defense Secretary Mark Esper said US troops were continuing their withdrawal from northern Syria, and that no ground forces would participate in enforcing the cease-fire that Vice President Mike Pence announced Thursday in Ankara.
“The force protection of our service members remains our top priority and, as always, US forces will defend themselves from any threat as we complete our withdrawal from the area,” Esper told reporters.
As fighting continued earlier Friday near the Turkish-Syrian border, President Trump minimized the situation and defended the temporary cease-fire deal the US cut with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“Just spoke to President @RTErdogan of Turkey. He told me there was minor sniper and mortar fire that was quickly eliminated. He very much wants the ceasefire, or pause, to work. Likewise, the Kurds want it, and the ultimate solution, to happen,” Trump tweeted.
He then said that some European countries, without naming them, were now willing to take back ISIS fighters who came from Europe.
The president amplified his remarks later at the White House .
“I just spoke to President Erdogan. Turkey, we’re doing very, very well with Turkey. We have ISIS totally under guard,” he said.
“So you have the Kurds who we’re dealing with and are very happy about the way things are going, I must say, the Kurds, and you also have the Turks watching, so we are [keeping] ISIS under control.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Friday ripped Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from Syria, calling it “a grave strategic mistake.”
Writing in an op-ed for The Washington Post, McConnell said, “there is no substitute for American leadership.”
Shelling and machine-gun fire could be heard at the border on Friday morning despite the fiveday cease-fire, and smoke could be seen rising from the town of Ras al-Ayn, although the sounds of fighting had subsided by midmorning.
The truce sets out a five-day pause to let the Kurdish-led SDF militia withdraw from an area controlled by Turkish forces.
Kurdish officials said Turkey was not abiding by the cease-fire and called for international monitors to step in to guarantee the truce.
“We call on the United Nations, the Security Council, the Arab League and, in particular, the United States of America — as the mediator and supervisor of this agreement — to do their responsibility and send international observers in order to maintain the agreement and the temporary ceasefire,” the Syrian Democratic Council, the political arm of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said in a statement, according to Rudaw, a Kurdish news site.
At least 218 civilians in northern Syria have died since the incursion began, according to the Kurds.
Another 20 were killed in Turkey by Kurdish mortar attacks, Erdogan said.