Turkish jets bomb city in Syria
KOCABEYLI, Turkey — Turkish jets bombed the Kurdishcontrolled city of Afrin in northern Syria on Saturday, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised to expand Turkey’s military border operations against a Kurdish group that has been the U.S.’s key Syria ally in the war on the Islamic State group.
The raids came on the heels of a week of threats by the Turkish government, promising to clear the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, from Afrin and its surrounding countryside. Turkey’s military is calling the campaign Operation Olive Branch.
Turkey says the YPG — a group it considers a terrorist organization — 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.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said a ground offensive could begin Sunday, but the state run Anadolu News Agency reported that Syrian forces backed by Ankara had already penetrated the Kurdish enclave. They crossed over from Turkey but were turned back by the YPG, according to Rojhat Roj, a Kurdish spokesman.
Associated Press journalists at the Turkish border saw jets bombing positions in the direction of Afrin, as a convoy of armed pickups and buses believed to be carrying Syrian opposition fighters traveled along the border. Video from Turkey showed the military moving tanks to the frontier.
Roads out of Afrin were closed and the YPG were not allowing anyone to leave the city, but morale was high, according to a resident who was reached by phone.
“So far the People’s Protection Units have not called on the people to mobilize,” said Ramzi Hamidi. Turkey, he said, “will learn a lesson they have not learned before.”
Ten civilians were wounded in the airstrikes, three seriously, according to Roj.