Syrian Kurds battle Turkey offensive on Ain Issa: war monitor
Kurdish YPG/SDF forces battle Turkey forces near Ain Issa, Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), November 23, 2019. Photo: Screengrab/ANF News Agency video
BEIRUT,— Kurdish fighters sought to fend off Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies near a key town in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) in northern Syria on Saturday, a Britain-based war monitor said.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the autonomous Kurdish administration’s de facto army, said pro-Ankara Arab fighters had launched an attack on Ain Issa, where they have bases and offices.
“Turkish forces launched attacks with tanks, artillery and a large number of mercenaries… to invade Ain Issa,” they said in a statement on Twitter in English.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said Turkish drones and artillery batteries were backing pro-Ankara fighters in clashes a kilometre (less than a mile) from the town.
“The SDF are trying to prevent Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies from advancing towards the town,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Ankara and its Syrian Arab proxies on October 9, 2019 launched a cross-border attack against Kurdish fighters in Syrian Kurdistan after the United States said it would be withdrawing troops from the region.
The invasion and a subsequent Russian-Turkish accord saw Turkey seize control a strip of land roughly 120 kilometres long and 30 kilometres deep on the Syrian side of the border.
Ain Issa lies on the southern edge of that strip of land, on the key M4 highway that runs east to west across the northern part of the war-torn country.
Ankara said it would suspend the military operation after the October 22 deal with Moscow, but forces have continued to inch forward ever since, the Observatory says.
Kurdish fighters have been a key ally of the United States in fighting the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria, but Turkey sees them as a “terrorist” group.
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.
Syria’s Kurds have established a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Syria during the country’s eight-year war.
In 2013, the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD — the political branch of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) — has established three autonomous Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan in 2013. On March 17, 2016, Kurdish and Arab authorities announced the creation of a “federal region” made up of those semi-autonomous regions in Syrian Kurdistan.
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | AFP
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