SDF sees danger from Turkish forces
BEIRUT: The United Statesbacked Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) sees a ‘‘big possibility of open, fierce confrontation’’ with Turkish forces in an area of northwestern Syria where the sides exchanged fire on Wednesday, a senior SDF official said yesterday.
Naser Haj Mansour, an adviser to the SDF, told Reuters the SDF had taken a decision to confront Turkish forces ‘‘if they try to go beyond the known lines’’ in the area where Turkey-backed Syrian rebels say Ankara has recently deployed extra forces.
Mansour also said a Turkish attack on SDFheld areas would ‘‘do great harm’’ to the SDF campaign to drive Islamic State from its base of operations at Raqqa by drawing SDF fighters away from frontlines at the city.
Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said yesterday the Syrian Government of President Bashar alAssad appeared so far to have heeded a warning this week from Washington not to carry out a chemical weapons attack.
Russia, the Syrian Government’s main backer in the country’s civil war, warned it would respond proportionately if the US took preemptive measures against Syrian forces to stop what the White House said could be a planned chemical attack.
The warning was based on intelligence that indicated preparations for such a strike were under way at Syria’s Shayrat airfield, US officials said.
‘‘It appears that they took the warning seriously,’’ Mattis said. ‘‘They didn’t do it,’’ he told reporters flying with him to Brussels for a meeting of Nato defence ministers.
On the Syrian battlefields, Turkish artillery bombarded and destroyed Kurdish YPG militia targets after the group’s fighters opened fire on Turkish-backed forces in northern Syria.
The United States supports the YPG in the fight against Islamic State in Syria, while Nato ally Turkey regards them as terrorists indistinguishable from Kurdish militants carrying out an insurgency in southeast Turkey.
Ankara was angered by a US decision in June to arm the YPG in the battle for Islamic State’s stronghold of Raqqa.