Over 60,000 Syrian Kurdish civilians have fled their homes during the first 36 hours of a massive cross-border operation by the Turkish army and Ankara-backed Islamist rebels, a monitoring group said.
“Displacement continues from different parts of the eastern Euphrates region due to the Turkish military operation in the area, where the Syrian Observatory monitored the rise of the number of displaced to more than 60 thousand civilians within less than 36 hours, for fear of the Turkish military operation, as Al-Darbasiyah city and Ras Al-Ain city are almost empty of its inhabitants,” the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“Turkish forces bombed areas around the villages of Zuhairiyah and Jam Sharaf in the countryside of al-Malikiyah. Also, the SDF shot down a reconnaissance aircraft in the skies of “Qasr Deep” in Malikiyah countryside,” the report added.
On Wednesday, Turkey announced the operation, which aims at wiping out the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) from the border areas.