Kurdish-led Syrian forces report Turkish air raids on bases

The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said on Saturday the Turkish military had escalated attacks on its territory in northern Syria, accusing Ankara of sending vehicles over the border in the Kobani area, but a Turkish official denied it.

The tanks were hit in the area of the Syrian town of Jarabulus, which Turkish forces helped pro-Ankara rebels seize from jihadists on Wednesday, the Dogan news agency said.

Turkey fears Kurdish forces gaining an unbroken strip of territory along its border, which would be a huge boost to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Turkish Kurdish rebel group fighting for autonomy since the 1980s.

The airstrikes were launched at 10:00 a.m. local time (7:00 a.m. GMT) eight kilometres south of Jarablus, according to the report. But the body is perceived by the Syrian rebels to be controlled by the Kurdish forces. Turkey says the Kurds must withdraw to the east of the nearby Euphrates River. The US is also allied with Syrian rebels fighting Assad and Islamic State but who have also fought against the Syrian Kurds.

That group includes fighters from the Kurdish YPG, which is the Syrian wing of a Kurdish group in Turkey called the PKK, which Ankara has outlawed and considers a terrorist organization.

Turkey has long suspected the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, of being linked to Kurdish insurgents in its own southeast, which it labels as a terror group.

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

On Saturday, an AFP correspondent at the Turkish border village of Karkamis saw six more tanks crossing into Syria, adding to the dozens of tanks and hundreds of troops already in the country.

“We are still waiting to see if they are going to retreat back to east of the Euphrates”, said Ahmed Othman, the commander of an ethnic Turkmen force within the USA -supported Free Syrian Army, referring to the Kurds.

But neither side gave pledges on getting much-needed aid into the city.

The SDF had previously advanced to within a mile of Jarablus after driving Isis out of swathes of northern Syria in recent months, including the key city of Manbij. On Thursday, under USA pressure, the Kurdish forces, known by the acronym YPG, declared that they had pulled out of the predominantly Arab town.

Turkey’s defense minister, Fikri Isik, said the operation has two main goals, including securing the border and preventing Kurdish forces from reaching the area west of the Euphrates.

“People are suffering and need assistance. All must put the civilian population of Aleppo first and exert their influence now”, de Mistura said in a statement, urging an approval by Sunday.

At least 15 civilians were killed in barrel bomb attacks by regime aircraft on the rebel-held Maadi district in the city’s east, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory said.

Mohammed Khandakani, a hospital volunteer, said one of the injured told him a barrel bomb was dropped in the Bab al-Nairab neighborhood as people paid their condolences for children killed Thursday in an airstrike that left 11 children dead in the same neighborhood.

Elsewhere in Syria, another group of residents was evacuated from the Damascus suburb of Daraya, part of a deal struck between Syrian rebels and the government following a grueling bombing campaign and four-year siege.

Witnesses said one barrel bomb in Aleppo attracted crowds and ambulances to the spot, who were then struck by a second.

The declaration comes a day after the evacuation of almost 5,000 residents and fighters from the suburb began.

The Syrian government and its Russian ally are the only ones operating helicopters over Aleppo.

Some 280 rebels, their families and wounded arrived Saturday morning in a village in the northern rebel-held Idlib province.