Syrian Kurds yesterday issued a “general mobilization” call in northeastern Syria along the border with Turkey, as Ankara poised for an imminent invasion of the area in the latest major escalation in the war-ravaged country.
Turkey has long threatened an attack on the Kurdish fighters in Syria whom Ankara considers terrorists allied with a Kurdish insurgency within Turkey.
A Syrian war monitoring group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported that people were fleeing the border town of Tal Abyad, which Turkey is expected to attack first.
Photo: AFP
Expectations of a Turkish invasion rose after US President Donald Trump on Sunday abruptly announced that US troops would step aside ahead of the Turkish push — a shift in US policy that essentially abandoned the Syrian Kurds, longtime US allies in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria.
However, Trump also threatened to “totally destroy and obliterate” Turkey’s economy if the Turkish push into Syria went too far.
Turkey has been massing troops for days along its border with Syria and vowed it would go ahead with the military operation and not bow to the US threat over its plans against the Kurds.
A senior Turkish official yesterday said that Turkey’s troops would “shortly” cross into Syria, together with allied Syrian rebel forces to battle the Kurdish fighters and the Islamic State.
In its call for mobilization, the local civilian Kurdish authority known as the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, urged the international community to live up to its responsibilities as “a humanitarian catastrophe might befall our people” in the region.
“We call upon our people, of all ethnic groups, to move toward areas close to the border with Turkey to carry out acts of resistance during this sensitive historical time,” it said.
The statement said the mobilization would last for three days.
The Kurds also said that they want the US-led coalition to set up a no-fly zone in northeast Syria to protect the civilian population from Turkish airstrikes.
Meanwhile, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov accused Washington of playing “very dangerous games” with the Syrian Kurds saying that the US first propped up the Syrian Kurdish “quasi state” in northeastern Syria and is now withdrawing its support.
“Such reckless attitude to this highly sensitive subject can set fire to the entire region, and we have to avoid it at any cost,” he said during a visit to Kazakhstan.
Earlier yesterday, Islamic State militants targeted a post of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the northern Syrian city of al-Raqqah, which was once the de facto Islamic State capital at the height of the militants’ power in the region.
There was no word on casualties, but the observatory said the attack involved two Islamic State fighters who engaged in a shootout before blowing themselves up.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not