Turkey begins assault on Kurdish-held enclave in Syria

The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia has said Turkish forces have fired about 70 shells at Kurdish villages in the Afrin region of north-western Syria, as Ankara said its threatened military assault was “de facto” under way.

The bombardment from Turkish territory began at around midnight and continued into Friday morning. Turkey considers the Syrian Kurdish militia as an extension of Kurdish rebels fighting Turkey and has vowed to attack their Afrin enclave, massing troops and tanks on its border for several days.

Military action, however, risks further inflaming relations with the US, which allied with the Kurdish-led Syrian Defence Force in its campaign against Islamic State.

The Turkish defence minister, Nurettin Canikli, on Friday said the assault had begun.

“The operation has actually started de facto with cross-border shelling,” Canikli told the broadcaster A Haber. “When I say ‘de facto’, I don’t want it to be misunderstood. It has begun. All terror networks and elements in northern Syria will be eliminated. There is no other way.”

Rojhat Roj, a YPG spokesman in Afrin, told Reuters that Friday’s assault marked the heaviest Turkish bombardment since the Turkish government stepped up threats to take military action against the Kurdish region.

Roj, speaking from Afrin, said the YPG would respond with utmost force to any attack on Afrin.

Military action would mean confronting Kurds allied to the United States at a time when Turkey’s relations with Washington are reaching breaking point. The US state department has called on Turkey to focus on the fight against Isis and not send its troops into Afrin.

“We would call ... on the Turks to not take any actions of that sort,” the state department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told a briefing this week. “We don’t want them to engage in violence but we want them to keep focused on Isis.”

Turkey sent its military chief to Moscow on Thursday, seeking approval for an air campaign in the Kurdish-controlled region, although Damascus has warned it could shoot down any Turkish planes in its skies.

The issue is one of several that have disrupted relations between Washington and its biggest Muslim ally within Nato. The countries are also at odds over the US refusal to extradite a cleric Turkey blames for a failed 2016 coup, and the US prosecution of a Turkish banker for sanctions busting, in which testimony implicated top Turkish officials.

Original Article
Source: theguardian.com
Author: Reuters