Turkey denies employ of chemical weapons in Syria’s Afrin

A senior Turkish suited has denied the claims by a monitoring community and Syrian say media that Turkey’s military used chemical weapons on civilians in its operation in opposition to the Kurdish YPG opponents in northwestern Syria.

« It’s out of question for Turkey to make employ of an internationally prohibited war software program in Afrin, » Yasin Aktay, a major adviser to the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, suggested Al Jazeera over the mobile phone on Sunday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-essentially essentially based mostly monitoring community, said six folks had been wounded in Turkish shelling in Al-Sheikh Hadid in the Afrin space on Friday had difficulties respiratory and had their pupils diluted.

Al-Sheikh Hadid is located 30km to the west of the metropolis of Afrin.

« Medical sources confirmed the usage of gases all the arrangement in which by arrangement of the shelling, nonetheless the Syrian Observatory develop into no longer able, till now, to know the form of the used gases, » an announcement by the community said.

SANA, the suited Syrian news company, quoting native medical doctors, repeated the claim, and said that six folks had been hospitalised with indicators of suffocation from Turkish projectiles carrying poisonous gasoline.

Hediye Yusuf, a Syrian Kurdish politician, posted photos of a lot of allegedly wounded males on Twitter on Saturday, claiming they had been uncovered to a sarin gasoline assault by Turkish forces.

‏Aktay, who is additionally a senior MP, said that the events who accuse Turkey must peaceful present their claims.

« The Afrin operation, and the Syrian war on the total, dangle radically change a war of propaganda. And Turkey’s rivals are attempting to design up for the war they are shedding on the ground by arrangement of this propaganda, » he added.

Turkey launched the operation to Afrin closing month [AP]

Aktay additionally said that the Turkish army develop into taking the operation slower than its doable to dangle away from civilian casualties.

« In most cases talking, if Turkey develop into no longer being utmost cautious about no longer killing civilians in Afrin, and followed the methods [Syian President Bashar] al-Assad implemented on his accept as true with folks, this operation would doubtlessly dangle been concluded by now, » he said.

Turkish military has once extra denied allegations that civilians had been being killed in the operation in an announcement on Saturday.

It additionally said that « 1614 terrorists » and 32 troopers dangle been killed in the operation because it started a month in the past.

YPG centered

Turkey, along with the Syrian opposition forces it supports, closing month launched an air and ground operation known as « Operation Olive Department » into the Afrin space to sweep the US-backed Kurdish Folk’s Protection Units (YPG) opponents from its border there. 

Turkey considers thethe Kurdish Democratic Union Celebration (PYD), filled with life in Syria, and its armed flit YPG as « terrorist teams » with ties to the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Celebration (PKK).

The PKK has waged a many years-prolonged armed wrestle in opposition to the Turkish say that killed tens of thousands of folks.

The PYD/YPG has option to adjust orderly swaths of northern Syria, along side Afrin, in the midst of the Syrian war, particularly by arrangement of stopping in opposition to the Islamic Issue of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in an US-backed umbrella organisation named Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). 

The US give a boost to for SDF has infuriated Turkey and created the ongoing diplomatic crisis between the 2 NATO allies. 

Apply Umut Uras on Twitter: @Um_Uras