GROUND TROOPS HAVE ENTERED SYRIA IN FIGHT AGAINST KURDS, PM SAYS
Turkey opened a new front Sunday in its assault on Kurdish militias in northern Syria, launching a ground offensive with allied Syrian rebels and injecting new uncertainty into an already volatile civil war.
The land operation by Turkish forces, which began Sunday morning, comes as Turkey intensified air and artillery strikes on the Syrian-Kurdish enclave, Afrin, over the weekend.
Turkey on Saturday had announced the formal start of “Operation Olive Branch,” an apparently open-ended offensive that envisions attacks on at least two Kurdish-controlled cities.
Turkish troops and Syrian rebels would then establish a “secure zone” along the border, the Turkish prime minister said Sunday.
“Our units have entered Afrin … with the Free Syrian Army,” Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told reporters in Istanbul, according to Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper.
“This means the land operation has begun.”
The State Department on Sunday said that “the United States is very concerned about the situation in northwest Syria.”