Turkey relaunches airstrikes, hits Syrian Kurdish enclave
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey resumed airstrikes on Syria’s Kurdish enclave of Afrin after a brief lull, killing and wounding several people, the military and Kurdish officials said Friday.
The attacks on border areas and the main town in the region began Thursday night and have been among the worst since the Turkish army and Ankara-backed opposition fighters began a ground and air campaign on the Afrin enclave three weeks ago, Kurdish officials said.
The offensive has displaced thousands of people, many of whom have gone to the town of Afrin already crowded with tens of thousands of displaced who fled violence in Syria.
The new bloodshed came as Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron discussed cooperating more closely to resolve the Syrian conflict in a phone call Friday.
The civil war has killed 400,000, displaced half the population and sent more than 5 million refugees to neighboring countries.
The Kremlin did elaborate on the call not between Putin and Macron.
Russia has been one of President Bashar Assad’s strongest supporters, intervening in 2015 to tip the balance of power in his favor. France is among Assad’s harshest critics.
Macron’s office said he pushed for more robust peace talks — notably after a Russia-sponsored effort last month was boycotted by the Syrian opposition.
Macron also pressed Putin to stop “intolerable degradation of the humanitarian situation” in regions that have been pummeled by Syrian and Russian airstrikes in recent days, according to a statement from his office.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said F-16 jets resumed bombing Thursday night, striking the northwestern enclave’s Mount Bafilun, the villages of Sheik Huruz and Kefer Jenne, and the regions of Sheran, Jinderes and Raju, among other targets.
Turkey’s military issued a brief statement Friday, saying its jets hit 19 targets, including shelters, ammunition depots and gun positions belonging to “terror” organizations. All planes returned safely, the statement added.
Afrin-based Kurdish official Rezan Hiddo said by telephone that Turkish warplanes hit 23 points. He added that Turkey’s artillery in three areas near Afrin have been pounding the town.
“For the past 21 days, the Turkish army has been violating all laws related to war,” Hiddo said.
Unconfirmed Turkish media reports had said that Turkey halted flights after Russia closed the airspace over Afrin after militants shot down a Russian Su-25 fighter jet in Idlib province Feb. 3. Russia effectively controls the skies over the northern region.
Anadolu and the private Dogan news agency later reported that Turkish troops and Turkey-backed opposition fighters cleared five villages of Kurdish fighters in the Afrin region.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrikes targeted Afrin and its outskirts, killing two people and wounding others.
An airstrike Friday on the village of Hass in Idlib province killed at least 14 people, according to the Observatory and other opposition activists.
Also Friday, Save the Children said tens of thousands of children are in immediate danger in the besieged eastern suburbs of Damascus, under intense shelling and airstrikes.