Kurds demand coalition end Turkish raids

Up to 20 fighters killed in strikes

BEIRUT, April 25, (Agencies): A commander for Kurdish forces battling jihadists in northern Syria urged the US-led coalition backing the offensive to prevent further Turkish strikes on their forces.

“We are asking the international coalition to intervene to stop these Turkish violations,” the commander told AFP, after Turkish strikes targeting the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) killed at least 20 people on Tuesday.

“It’s unthinkable that we are fighting on a front as important as (Islamic State group bastion) Raqa while Turkish planes bomb us in the back,” the commander said.

The YPG has expelled IS out of swathes of territory in Syria’s north and makes up the bulk of the units bearing down on Raqa city.

Turkey carried out the air strikes on YPG positions before dawn on Tuesday, and also hit Kurdish militia in neighbouring Iraq.

“The YPG will not be silent on this blatant attack, and we reserve our right to defend ourselves and take revenge for our martyrs,” YPG spokesman Redur Xelil said.

The US-led coalition “has a huge responsibility and must carry out its duty to protect this area, because we are partners in fighting IS,” he said.

He spoke to AFP at the targeted YPG base in the northeast province of Hasakeh, in a sliver of Syrian territory wedged between Turkey to the north and Iraq to the east.

AFP’s correspondent saw rescue workers climb through the rubble of destroyed buildings at the base to look for survivors, as ambulances waited nearby.

Turkey’s military said it killed around 70 militants in operations on Tuesday in Iraq’s Sinjar and northern Syria, as it stepped up a campaign against groups affiliated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The military made the announcement in an official statement.

Differences over Syria policy have caused friction between the United States and Ankara. Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters, part of a militia backed by Washington in the fight against Islamic State in Syria, to be a terrorist organisation.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government condemned Turkish air strikes in northern Iraq Tuesday in which forces from the autonomous Kurdistan region were killed in an apparent accident.

“The Iraqi government condemns and rejects the strikes carried out by Turkish aircraft on Iraqi territory,” spokesman Saad al-Hadithi said in a statement.

Hadithi said Baghdad considered the overnight raid as “a violation of international law and of Iraqi sovereignty”. He also said the Iraqi government saw such uncoordinated cross-border air strikes as “negatively affecting the efforts of Iraq and the international community in the war against terrorism”.

Turkey, whose relations with Baghdad have been icy recently, wants Iraq to do more to root out the PKK, which has bases and fighters in northern Iraq.

Hadithi argued however that Turkey should not take the issue into its own hands.

“The solution to the problem of the presence on Iraqi territory of PKK members must be coordinated with the Iraqi government,” he said.

Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish militants in Iraq’s Sinjar region and in northeastern Syria on Tuesday, killing more than 20 in a widening campaign against groups affiliated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The air strikes in Syria targeted the YPG — a key component of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which are backed by the United States and have been closing in on the Islamic State bastion of Raqqa.

The Turkish raids showed the challenges facing USled attempts to defeat Islamic State in Syria and risks increasing tension between NATO allies Washington

and Ankara over Kurdish combatants who have been crucial in driving back the jihadists.

A US military officer accompanied YPG commanders on a tour of the sites hit near Syria’s frontier with Turkey later on Tuesday, a Reuters witness said, demonstrating the close partnership.

The YPG said in a statement its headquarters in Mount Karachok near Syria’s frontier with Turkey had been hit, including a media centre, a local radio station, communications facilities and military institutions.

“As a result of the barbaric strikes by the Turkish warplanes at dawn today against the YPG centre ... 20 fighters were martyred and 18 others wounded, three of them critically,” said spokesman Redur Xelil.

Ilham Ahmed, a senior Kurdish politician who co-chairs the political wing of the SDF, said they wanted the United States to provide aerial protection against Turkey.

The Turkish military said the two regions it struck around 2 am (2300 GMT), had become “terror hubs” and the aim of the bombardment was to prevent the PKK sending weapons and explosives for attacks inside Turkey.

Designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, the PKK has waged a threedecade insurgency against the Turkish state for Kurdish autonomy. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the

conflict, most of them Kurds.

Turkish security sources said 20 PKK militants had been killed on Tuesday in operations backed by the air force in the largely Kurdish southeast. Two Turkish soldiers were also killed when a roadside handmade bomb planted by the PKK blew up in Sirnak province.

Turkey has regularly bombed the mountainous border area between Iraq and Turkey where PKK militants are based, since a ceasefire broke down in July 2015. But Tuesday’s raid was the first time they have targeted its affiliate in the northwestern Sinjar area.

The PKK established a presence in Sinjar, bordering Syria, after coming to the aid of its Yazidi population when Islamic State militants overran the area in the summer of 2014 and killed and captured thousands of members of the minority faith.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said he will not allow Sinjar, around 115 kms (70 miles) from the Turkish border, to become a “new Qandil”, referring to a PKK stronghold in Iraq near the borders with Turkey and Iran.

The presence of a PKK affiliate in Sinjar is also rejected by Kurdish authorities who run their own autonomous region in northern Iraq and enjoy good relations with Turkey.

Five members of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces, which are also deployed in Sinjar, were killed, and nine wounded in one of the Turkish air strikes, according to the peshmerga ministry, apparently by accident.

It called the attack “unacceptable” but blamed the PKK for being there and demanded the group withdraw from Sinjar.