Turkey vows to fight ‘until no terrorist is left’
Offensive to expand, go eastward to Iraq border, Erdogan says
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Friday to expand Ankara’s operation in a Kurdish enclave in northern Syria eastward, toward the border with Iraq.
In Vienna, the Syrian opposition and Russia agreed to a cease-fire to halt the fighting over the besieged eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, an area the U.N. has called the “epicenter of suffering” in the war-torn country.
The agreement, confirmed to The Associated Press by opposition official Ahmad Ramadan, is contingent on Russia compelling the government to allow aid flow to the suburbs, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.
Russia is a key Syrian President Assad.
Rebels gave the government 24 hours to comply, said Ammar Hassan, spokesman for the Islam Army, one of the factions fighting inside the area.
The government did not sign the agreement, said opposition adviser Omar Kouch.
The eastern Ghouta area has seen more than two months of violent fighting since rebels tried to ease a choking government blockade that has depleted food and medical supplies.
The U.N. reported in November that child malnutrition in eastern Ghouta was at the worst ever recorded throughout the seven years of civil war.
It estimates there are 400,000 people trapped under the government’s ally of Bashar siege.
Conditions deteriorated precipitously after pro-government forces choked off the last smuggling tunnels leading to the oppositionheld suburbs in May.
A “de-escalation” agreement brokered by Russia, Iran, and Turkey in August failed to bring any relief.
The new agreement, the latest in a long line of short-lived truces for Syria, was announced on the last day of a U.N.-mediated round of peace talks in the Austrian capital. Another round, mediated by Russia, starts in Sochi on Monday.
Erdogan said the Turkish forces’ push into Afrin would stretch farther east, to the Syrian Kurdish town of Manbij, and toward the border with Iraq “until no terrorist is left.”
Erdogan’s latest comments appeared to be in defiance of the United States, which has urged Turkey to keep its campaign in Syria “limited in scope and duration” and to focus on ending the war.
Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish forces, known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, to be a terrorist group because of their purported links to Kurdish insurgents within Turkey’s own border.
Manbij is held by the Syrian Democratic Forces, dominated by the YPG. U.S. troops are not present in Afrin but are embedded with the SDF in other parts of Syria, where they are working to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State group.
“We will clear Manbij of terrorists No one should be disturbed by this because the real owners of Manbij are not these terrorists, they are our Arab brothers,” Erdogan said.
Ankara’s push into Manbij would put Turkish troops in proximity to American soldiers there.
Turkey’s Health Minister Ahmet Demircan said Friday that the operation into Afrin had led to 14 deaths on the Turkish side.
Three Turkish soldiers and 11 Syrian opposition fighters allied with them were killed in fighting since Jan. 20, he said.
Some 130 others wounded.
The SDF said the first week of Turkey’s incursion had left more than 100 civilians and fighters dead. The group said in a statement Friday that among the dead are 59 civilians and 43 fighters, including eight women fighters.
At least 134 civilians were wounded in the weeklong clashes, it said. were