Turkey launches airstrikes over northern Syria

Beirut: Turkey launched airstrikes over several towns in
northern Syria on Saturday, US-backed Kurdish-led forces reported.
The airstrikes occurred a week after a bomb rocked a bustling avenue
in the heart of Istanbul, killing six people and wounding over 80
others. Turkish authorities blamed the attack on the outlawed
Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, as well as Syrian Kurdish groups
affiliated with it. The Kurdish militants groups have, however, denied
involvement.

Ankara and Washington both consider the PKK a terror group, but
disagree on the status of the Syrian Kurdish groups, which have been
allied with the US in the fight against the Islamic State group in
Syria.

Following the strikes, the Turkish ministry of defense posted a photo
of a fighter plane with the phrase, “The treacherous attacks of the
scoundrels are being held to account.”

The airstrikes targeted Kobani, a strategic town near the Turkish
border that Ankara had previously attempted to overtake in its plans
to establish a “safe zone” along northern Syria. SDF spokesperson
Farhad Shami in a tweet added that two villages heavily populated with
displaced people were under Turkish bombardment. He said the strikes
had resulted in “deaths and injuries.”

Syrian opposition media reported that Turkish airstrikes targeted
Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces positions.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition
war monitor, reported that the strikes had also hit Syrian army
positions and that at least 12 had been killed, including both SDF and
Syrian army soldiers.

The observatory said about 25 air strikes were carried out by Turkish
warplanes on sites in the countryside of Aleppo, Raqqa and Hasakah.
In neighbouring Iraq, the US Consulate General in Erbil said it is
monitoring “credible open-source reports” of potential Turkish
military action in northern Syria and northern Iraq in the coming
days.

The Kurdish-led authority in northeast Syria said Saturday that if
Turkey attacks, then fighters in the area would have “the right to
resist and defend our areas in a major way that will take the region
into a long war.”

Turkey has launched three major cross-border operations into Syria
since 2016 and already controls some territories in the north.