Turkish ground forces yesterday seized at least one village from Kurdish fighters in northern Syria as they pressed ahead with their assault for a second day, pounding towns and villages along the border with airstrikes and artillery.
Residents of border areas within Syria scrambled in panic as they tried to get out on foot and in vehicles piled with mattresses and belongings.
More than a dozen columns of heavy black smoke, apparently from fires caused by shelling, rose above one border town.
Photo: EPA-EFE
It was wrenchingly familiar for the many who, only a few years ago, had fled the advances on their towns and villages by the Islamic State group.
The Turkish invasion was launched three days after US President Donald Trump opened the way by pulling US troops from their positions near the border alongside their Kurdish allies.
At a time when Trump faces an impeachment inquiry, the move drew swift criticism from Republicans and Democrats in the US Congress, along with many national defense experts, who say the move has placed US credibility, as well as the Kurds and regional stability, at great risk.
The Syrian Kurdish militia was the US’ only ally on the ground in the years-long campaign that brought down the Islamic State group in Syria.
After ordering the pullback, Trump warned Turkey to be moderate in its assault into northern Syria, but the opening barrage showed little sign of holding back: The Turkish Ministry of National Defense said its jets and artillery had struck 181 targets.
A Kurdish-led group and Syrian activists claimed that despite the bombardment, Turkish troops had not made much progress on several fronts they had opened over the past hours, but their claims could not be independently verified and the situation on the ground was difficult to assess.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed that so far 109 “terrorists” were killed in the offensive, a reference to the US-allied Syrian Kurdish fighters, who for the past years were the main force fighting the Islamic State group in Syria.
He did not elaborate and the reports on the ground did not indicate anything remotely close to such a large number of casualties.
Erdogan also warned the EU not to call Ankara’s incursion into Syria an “invasion,” and threatened, as he has in the past, to “open the gates” and let Syrian refugees flood into Europe.
Meanwhile, Kurdish forces yesterday halted all operations against the Islamic State group to focus on fighting Turkish troops, Kurdish and US officials said.
The Syrian Kurdish fighters have been involved in mopping-up operations against Islamic State fighters still holed up in the desert after their territorial hold was toppled earlier this year.
Turkey considers the Kurdish militia “terrorists” because of their links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has led an insurgency against Turkey for 35 years, killing tens of thousands.
Turkey considers its operations against the Kurdish militia in Syria a matter of its own survival and it also insists it will not tolerate the virtual self-rule that the Kurds have succeeded in carving out in northern Syria along the border.
The Turkish assault aims to carve out a zone of control the length of the border — a so-called “safe zone” — clearing out the Kurdish militia. Such a zone would end the Kurds’ autonomy in the area and put much of their population under Turkish control.
Ankara has said it aims to settle about 2 million Syrian refugees, who are mainly Arabs, in the zone.
Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said its fighters had repelled Turkish forces ground attacks.
“No advance as of now,’’ he tweeted yesterday.
However, Major Youssef Hammoud, spokesman for the Turkish-backed fighters participating in the operation, said the fighters had captured the village of Yabisa, near the one of the main initial targets of the assault, the town of Tal Abyad.
In a tweet, he called it “the first village to win freedom.’’
In Washington, officials on Wednesday said that two British militants believed to be part of an Islamic State cell that beheaded hostages had been moved out of a detention center in Syria and were in US custody.
The two, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Amon Kotey, along with other British fighters allegedly made up the cell nicknamed “The Beatles’’ by surviving captives because of their English accents.
In 2014 and 2015, the militants held more than 20 Western hostages in Syria and tortured many of them.
The group beheaded seven American, British and Japanese journalists and aid workers, and a group of Syrian soldiers, boasting of the butchery in videos released to the world.
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