Turkish drone hits Kurd base
A TURKISH drone strike yesterday hit a base in north-east Syria used jointly by Kurdish forces and the Us-led coalition, the Kurds and a war monitor said.
Two fighters of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were killed, an SDF spokesperson said, but no US troops were there or in danger, according to the US Central Command.
“A joint base north of Hasakeh used for planning and executing joint operations against the Islamic State (IS) group has been hit by a Turkish drone,” said SDF spokesperson Farhad Shami.
A Britain-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, confirmed that two SDF fighters had been killed.
Centcom spokesperson Colonel Joe Buccino said: “We oppose any military action that destabilises the situation in Syria. These actions threaten our shared goals, including the continued fight against Isis to ensure the group can never resurge and threaten the region.”
Since Turkey launched a new air campaign against Kurdish rebel targets across Iraq and Syria on Sunday, it has come under pressure from Washington to hold off on a long-threatened ground operation into Syria.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has voiced growing defiance in the face of the US warnings, promising yesterday that the air campaign will be followed by a ground offensive.
“We have been on top of terrorists for a few days with our planes, cannons and drones,” Erdogan said. “God willing, we will root out all of them soon with our tanks, artillery and soldiers.”
Dubbed Operation Claw-sword, the air raids followed a bombing in Istanbul that killed six people and wounded 81.
Ankara blamed the attack on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a bloody insurgency for decades, but the group, which is blacklisted as a terrorist group by the EU and the US, has denied it was responsible.
In Syria, the principal target of the Turkish campaign is the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, who dominate the SDF. Washington forged a close alliance with the SDF during their successful campaign to oust IS from Syrian territory. But Ankara regards it as a terror group linked to the PKK.
In a veiled reference to Washington yesterday, Erdogan said his government knew “who protects, arms and encourages those terrorists”.
“The road has come to an end for those who think they can keep Turkey waiting by playing with letters and changing the name of the terrorist organisation,” he added.
The Kurds control parts of northern and north-eastern Syria, a country fragmented by the civil war that started in 2011. Between 2016 and 2019, Turkey launched three large-scale operations in northern Syria against Kurdish groups. SDF commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi charged that Turkey wants “to occupy the entire border area”.