Turkey-backed rebels expel Kurdish forces from Syrian towns

On Sunday, two separate blasts in the Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated southeast killed one Turkish soldier and wounded eight others, and Kurdish militants launched a rocket-propelled grenade at a civilian airport, officials and the state-run news agency said.

Turkish warplanes roared into northern Syria at daybreak and artillery pounded what security sources said were sites held by the Kurdish YPG militia, after the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported fierce overnight fighting around two villages.

Backed by Turkish tanks and reports of airstrikes, Turkey-allied Syrian rebels clashed with Kurdish-led forces in northeastern Syria in a new escalation that further complicates the already protracted Syrian conflict.

Turkey is determined to stop Kurdish forces from gaining control of a continuous stretch of Syrian territory on its frontier, which observers say would embolden the Kurds’ drive for autonomy.

Various factions of the Turkey-backed Syrian rebels said on Sunday they had seized at least four villages and one town from Kurdish-led forces south of Jarabulus.

The Syrian conflict has claimed the lives of more than 500,000, created, millions of refugees, and helped the rise of the Islamic State group, which has used Syria to recruit fighters and as a base to plan attacks overseas.

Despite the Observatory confirmation that all the slain were civilians, Turkey’s official statement claimed they’d only killed 25 people total, and that all were members of the Kurdish YPG.

“These are areas that Turkey has asked the YPG to pull out of”.

This picture, taken around five kilometers west of the Turkish border city of Karkamis in the southern region of Gaziantep on August 25, 2016, shows Turkish army tanks rolling to the Syrian side of the border for an operation in the town of Jarabulus.

The operation was carried out under the name “Shield of the Euphrates”. The rockets were fired from an area where the YPG militia were known to be active, and the Russian-made weapons are typical of those used by YPG militants.

He said the bombing also targeted al-Amarneh village and that 50 Turkish tanks had been involved in the offensive. Syrian rebels on Saturday said they had captured several villages, south of Jarablus, from Isis and Kurdish forces.

“Our operations will move from Jarablus to Manbij and Raqqah and later to other Syrian areas”, Tawil said.

Syria’s regime has been accused of regularly using barrel bombs – crude, explosive devices – on rebel-held areas that are home to civilians.

Jeb el-Kussa is located 14km (9 miles) south of Jarablus and is controlled by local fighters with support from Kurdish forces.

Yesterday, the last rebel fighters were evacuated from the town of Daraya just outside Damascus, under a deal that followed a brutal four-year government siege.