Turkey bombs Kurdish-controlled city of Afrin in northern Syria

Turkish jets have bombed the Kurdishcontrolled city of Afrin in northern Syria, as the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, promised to expand Turkey’s military border operations against a Kurdish group that has been the US’s key Syria ally in the war on Islamic State.

The raids came on the heels of a week of threats by Turkey, promising to clear the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) from Afrin and its surrounding countryside, also called Afrin. Turkey’s military is calling the campaign Operation Olive Branch.

Early on Sunday, four rockets fired from Syria hit the Turkish southern border town of Kilis, 40 km from Afrin, damaging houses, state-run Anadolu Agency said. There were no casualties, it said. Turkey says the YPG, a group it considers a terrorist organisation, is an extension of an outlawed Kurdish rebel group that it is fighting inside its own borders, and it has found common cause with Syrian opposition groups who view the YPG as a counter-revolutionary force in Syria’s multisided civil war.

Associated Press journalists at the Turkish border saw jets bombing positions in the direction of Afrin, as a convoy of armed pick-up trucks and buses believed to be carrying Syrian opposition fighters travelled along the border. Video from Turkey this week showed the military moving tanks to the frontier.

A spokesman for the Kurdish militia that controls the area said that ten people had been killed in the attack. “Seven civilians were killed, including a child, as well as two female fighters and one male fighter,” said Birusk Hasakeh for the YPG in Afrin, adding that the child was an eight-year-old boy. Earlier, the YPG’s political branch, the Democratic Union party (PYD), said that 25 civilians had been wounded in the bombing. Ankara also said there were casualties but all of them were Kurdish militants.

Meanwhile, the Russian defence ministry said it was pulling back troops that had been deployed near Afrin, two days after Turkey’s military and intelligence briefs travelled to Moscow to discuss the planned operation. It said the group of observers was being relocated to another area. It was not immediately clear how many troops were affected by the move.