Syrian Arab militants fighting for Ankara, drive in an armored Turkish army vehicle in the town of Ceylanpinar in Sanliurfa province, Turkey, on the border with Syria, October 11, 2019. Photo: Reuters
SERÊKANIYÊ, Syrian Kurdistan,— Turkish forces and pro-Ankara Syrian Arab fighters faced stiff Kurdish resistance Friday as they battled to seize key border towns in Syrian Kurdistan, on the third day of a broad offensive that sparked a civilian exodus.
US President Donald Trump, whose order to pull back US troops from the border this week effectively triggered the invasion, said Washington would now seek to broker a truce.
The third such Turkish operation since the start of the war in Syria, was met with fierce international condemnation, including among Trump’s own allies, over what many saw as the blatant betrayal of a faithful ally.
The Kurdish forces targeted by Turkey were the US-led coalition’s main ground partner in years of battle against the Islamic State group and its now-defunct “caliphate”.
The risk that thousands of the jihadists they still hold could break free on the back of the Turkish assault could yet spur the international community into action.
But two days into the offensive, the Kurdish led Syrian Democratic Forces were fending for themselves, trying to repulse multiple ground attacks along a roughly 120 kilometre (75 mile) long segment of the border.
“There is heavy fighting between the SDF and the Turks on different fronts, mostly from Tel Abyad to Ras al-Ain,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Britain-based war monitor said the Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies — mostly Sunni Arab former rebels — were deploying air strikes, heavy artillery and rocket fire.
A convoy of 20 armored vehicles carrying Turkish-allied former Syrian Arab rebels entered Syrian Kurdistan from Ceylanpinar. Some made victory signs, shouting “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) and waving Syrian rebel flags as they advanced towards Ras al Ain.
“In these moments, Tel Abyad is seeing the most intense battles in three days,” Marvan Qamishlo, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said.
Overnight, clashes erupted at different points along the border from Ain Diwar at the Iraqi frontier to Kobani, more than 400 km to the west. Turkish and SDF forces exchanged shelling in Qamishlo city among other places, the SDF’s Qamishlo said.
“The whole border was on fire,” he said.
Turkish forces have seized nine villages near Ras al Ain and Tel Abyad, said Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war.
At least 32 fighters with the SDF and 34 Turkey-backed Syrian militants have been killed in fighting, while 10 civilians have been killed, Abdulrahman said. The SDF said 22 of its fighters were killed on Wednesday and Thursday.
Exodus
“The SDF are using tunnels, trenches and berms” in their defence operations, the Observatory said.
Kurdish counter-attacks overnight led to the retaking of two of the 11 villages they had lost since the start of the Turkish-led assault on Wednesday.
The Observatory and a Kurdish military source said several Arab families in the border area had sided with Turkey, raising sleeper cells to attack from behind SDF lines.
An AFP correspondent in the Ras al-Ain area said new units of Syrian former rebels were being brought in to break Kurdish resistance.
The war monitor said at least 10 civilians and 29 SDF fighters had been killed since the launch of the offensive on Wednesday. The Turkish military announced its first fatality on Friday.
Serêkaniyê (Ras al-Ain in Arabic), Gire Spi (Tel Abyad in Arabic) and other border towns between them have been almost emptied of their population in a huge wave of displacement.
Most of the 70,000 people the United Nations confirmed had been displaced travelled east towards the city of Hasaka, which has not been targeted by Turkey.
“What does Erdogan want from us?,” asked one woman, referring to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as she and her family settled in a school the local authorities had turned into an emergency shelter.
“Is it all simply because we are Kurds?”
Erdogan wants to create a buffer between the border and territory controlled by Syrian Kurdish forces, who have links with Turkey’s own Kurdish rebels.
He also plans to use the strip, which he envisions will be about 30 kilometres (20 miles) deep and is mostly Arab, as an area in which to send back some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees who live on Turkish soil.
The area would be under Turkish control and run by Syrian proxies, a move that would make it hard for displaced Kurds to return and would durably reshape the area’s ethnic map.
In Syria’s al Bab, some 150 km west of the offensive, some 500 Ankara-backed Syrian Arab fighters were set to head to Turkey to join the operation, CNN Turk reported. It broadcast video of them performing Muslim prayers in military fatigues, their rifles laid down in front of them, before departing for Turkey.
Ceasefire?
On Twitter on Thursday, Trump said that he hoped to “mediate a deal between Turkey and the Kurds” — saying the alternatives were sending in “thousands of troops” or hitting Turkey hard with sanctions.
A US official explained that Trump had asked diplomats to try to broker a ceasefire agreement and argued sanctions against Turkey were not justified at this stage.
Asked to define what actions would violate Trump’s vague warning, the US official said they would include “ethnic cleansing… indiscriminate artillery, air and other fires directed at civilian populations.”
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said in a statement that it had to close down the hospital it supported in Tel Abyad.
The shelling there led most people to leave, including the hospital’s medical staff, it said.
Aid groups have warned of yet another humanitarian disaster in Syria’s eight-year-old war if the offensive was not stopped.
France, which was the United States’ top partner in the anti-IS coalition, has threatened sanctions against NATO member Turkey.
Turkey is still far from having reached the goals of its military invasion but the risk appears to be growing that detained IS fighters could break free.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he doubted Turkey would be able to ensure IS prisoners stay behind bars.
“I’m not sure whether the Turkish army will be able to take this under control — and how soon,” he said. “This is a real threat to us.”
According to the Kurdish administration, some 12,000 men are held in seven detention centres across Kurdish areas.
The Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ, considered the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and U.S. has provided them with arms. The YPG, which is the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.
The Kurdish forces expelled the Islamic State from its last patch of territory in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz in March 2019.
11,000 Kurdish male and female fighters had been killed in five years of war to eliminate the Islamic State “caliphate” that once covered an area the size of Great Britain in Syria and Iraq, Kurdish officials said.
The United States already plucked two of the most high-profile IS jihadists to have been captured alive and spirited them out of Syria.
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