Concerns over US-Turkey armed forces confrontation in Syria

A US-backed Kurdish militia has deployed fighters to the frontline of Syria’s Manbij to fight Turkey’s armed forces after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged it can well be subsequent after launching the noxious-border Afrin operation.

Manbij is set 100km east of Afrin where the US has armed forces personnel deployed in the fight in opposition to Islamic Hiss of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which system troops from the NATO allies can also approach face to face on the battlefield.

The US armed forces coalition working in Manbij acknowledged squaddies there hold the fair defend themselves in opposition to any assault, and wouldn’t hesitate to derive out so.

« Clearly we are very alert to what’s going down, particularly in the residence of Manbij on story of that is where our … coalition forces are, » spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon told Reuters news agency. « The coalition forces that are in that residence hold an inherent fair to defend themselves and ought to aloof carry out so if valuable. »

Sharfan Darwish of the Manbij Navy Council – a unit of the YPG Syrian-Kurd militia currently under assault by Turkey in Afrin – acknowledged his forces were making ready to confront Turkish squaddies.

« We are in corpulent readiness to reply to any assault. Pointless to notify our coordination with the realm coalition continues with regards to the security of Manbij, » acknowledged Darwish.

The intensifying subject in northern Syria ended in a phone call between Erdogan and US President Donald Trump on Wednesday.

Trump expressed scenario about Turkey’s « harmful and false rhetoric » over the subject and entreated caution so US and Turkish troops build now not purchase in fight.

« He entreated Turkey to de-escalate, restrict its armed forces actions, and withhold a ways from civilian casualties and increases to displaced people and refugees, » a White Home assertion acknowledged.  

« He entreated Turkey to exercise caution and to withhold a ways from any actions that would possibly possibly well well possibility war between Turkish and American forces. »

Erdogan threatened earlier Wednesday to lengthen the Afrin offensive to Manbij to « desirable our space from this wretchedness entirely ».

A protracted time-prolonged insurgency

Turkey sees the YPG – trained, armed and supported by the US to fight in opposition to ISIL – as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Uncover collectively (PKK), which has fought a bloody many years-prolonged insurgency in the country.

Erdogan indicated one purpose of the anti-YPG operation turned into to originate a honorable zone where about a of the easier than three million Syrians who fled to Turkey in the civil war can also return.    

« First we are capable of exterminate the terrorists, then we are capable of build the residence liveable. For who? For the three.5 million Syrian company in our land, » Erdogan acknowledged.

Turkey’s govt has hit out at « propaganda » in opposition to its noxious-border action. Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin has entreated the media and public to be attentive to « false, distortive and fascinating news ».

Within the period in-between, rockets fired from northern Syria slammed into a mosque and a residence on Wednesday interior Turkey, killing two of us and wounding eleven others. The projectiles were fired in the early evening into the border province of Kilis.

One Syrian and one Turk were killed, the Kilis governor’s role of labor acknowledged, in attacks it blamed on the YPG militia in Syria.

The Turkish armed forces acknowledged 260 Kurdish and ISIL fighters were killed so a ways in the 5-day Afrin incursion – a relate refuted by a Kurdish commander who acknowledged the amount turned into « tremendously exaggerated ».

Redur Xelil, an sterling from Syria Democratic Forces led by the YPG, denied the relate that ISIL fighters were allowing for the fight for Afrin. 

SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news companies