Turkish jets strike Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq

Rick Owen
01:24, Aug 30, 2016
Copyright 2015 All rights reserved. This material can't be published, transferred, copied or redistributed.

However, Kurdish-backed forces later said they will only pull back south from their current positions, in order not to put the lives of civilians in danger following attacks by Turkey-backed Syrian rebels.

"This is why the YPG and the (Kurdish) PYD are uncomfortable with this (Turkish-backed) operation", he said.

Clashes between the Turkish forces and the YPG over the weekend drew a sharp rebuke from the Pentagon, which called them "unacceptable".

And while battles between Turkish-backed rebels and Kurdish forces increase to the west of the Euphrates, Kurdish sources said Turkey had also crossed into Syria near Kobane, a symbolic town to the east of the Euphrates, to begin constructing a wall.

The YPG claims to have withdrawn from Jarablus and saysTurkey's claims to be attacking Kurdish "terrorists" are a pretext for occupying Syria.

US President Barack Obama will meet his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday in China on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit, with Syria high on the agenda, top aide Ben Rhodes announced Monday. But Ankara says it had seen no evidence of this. The United States is at odds with Russian Federation over the eastern Ukraine conflict and Washington and Moscow have struggled to stop fighting in Syria's civil war.

Obama´s meeting with Erdogan would be their first since a failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Monday accused the Kurdish militia of "ethnic cleansing" in the mainly Arab area around the city of Manbij, west of the Euphrates, which the YPG wrested from IS earlier this month.

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Turkey links the YPG, which operates in northern Syria, to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, an armed rebel group, and considers both to be terrorist organizations.

Syrian opposition activists have said that at least 35 civilians were killed in northern Syria in the Turkish-led operation so far.

A monitoring group said 41 people were killed by Turkish airstrikes on Sunday but Turkey denied any civilian casualties. Daesh is an acronym for IS.

The Anadolu Agency is citing military officials as saying that Turkish artillery immediately responded to the rockets fired on the town of Kilis on Monday by firing at targets across the border. In a written statement, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook called the clashes south of the Euphrates River town of Jarablus in Syria "unacceptable" and a source of "deep concern". "The United States was not involved in these activities, they were not coordinated with U.S. forces, and we do not support them", he said. This has "largely occurred", he added.

Monday's announcement by the Jarablus Military Council, which is part of the predominantly Kurdish Syria Democratic Forces, came hours after Turkey's foreign minister ordered Kurdish Syrian forces to withdraw east of the Euphrates River "immediately" or face more strikes.

Turkey's state-run news agency says three rockets fired from Syria have hit a Turkish border town, wounding five children between 8 years and 12 years of age.

Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus confirmed one of the key aims of its operation was to prevent the creation of a Kurdish-controlled corridor stretching from Iraq to the verge of the Mediterranean.

A spokesman for the autonomous Kurdish region in Syria, Ibrahim Ibrahim, confirmed the local military forces in Manbij were being reinforced, adding that this was not by the Kurdish militia but not saying who was responsible. But Turkey's president vowed to press ahead with the military operation until the IS and Kurdish Syrian fighters no longer pose a security threat to Ankara.

Copyright 2015 All rights reserved. This material can't be published, transferred, copied or redistributed.


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