The assessment is still confused when an NGO announces the death of at least twelve soldiers. These strikes occur almost a week after a murderous attack in Istanbul that the Turkish authorities attribute to the Kurdish movement of the PKK.
MO12345lemonde with AFP
“The account time has sounded! The bastards will have to account for their treacherous attacks”, wrote, Sunday, November 20, the Turkish Defense Ministry on its official Twitter account , showing the photo of a looting aircraft for a night operation without location of location .
For their part, the Kurdish forces accused the Turkish army of having bombed several regions on Saturday evening under their control in northern Syria. These raids are led a few days after the Kurdistan workers’ party (PKK) and the Syrian Democratic Forces (FDS), supported by Washington, rejected Ankara’s accusations on their responsibility and denied any link with the attack on Istanbul of November 13, which left six dead and 81 injured.
According to the FDS, Turkey has led these air strikes to the areas under its control in the provinces of Aleppo (North) and Hassaké (northeast), especially against the city of Kobané, near the Turkish border . “Kobane, the city that has defeated the Islamic State, is the target of bombing by the aviation of the Turkish occupation,” said Farhad Shami, a spokesperson for the SDF.
of bombing “Aggressive and Barbarians”
More than twenty strikes were made by the Turkish army in the two provinces, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), an NGO based in London and which has a large network of sources in Syria. The bombings killed at least six members of the FDS and six Prérégime soldiers, according to the OSDH.
For their part, the Kurdish forces have not announced losses in their ranks. But Mr. Shami confirmed that the Turkish bombings were targeting sites belonging to the Syrian government forces in the provinces of Raqqa and Hassaké (northeast) and Aleppo (north), killing and wounded. The commander-in-chief of the FDS, Mazloum Abdi, also criticized “aggressive and barbarians” bombings.
“The Turkish bombing of our areas threatens the whole region. This bombardment does not serve any party. We do everything to avoid a major disaster. If war broke out, everyone will be affected,” he tweeted.
Establish a safety zone
After the deadly attack on November 13 in the shopping street and very busy from Istiklal in Istanbul, the Turkish authorities had immediately suspected the PKK and the YPG (People’s Protection Units), Kurdish Militia active in Syria, accused by Turkey to be affiliated with the PKK. The Minister of the Interior Suleyman Soyu had specifically accused the latter, who control most of Northeast Syria, to be responsible for the attack, believing that “the order of the attack was given Kobane “.
According to the Turkish authorities, it is a young woman of Syrian nationality who laid the bomb and who declared, after her arrest, to have acted “on the order of the workers’ party of Kurdistan”.
The FDS, supported by Washington, denied any link with the attack. The US State Department said Friday feared “a possible military action of Turkey”, not advising its nationals to go to northern Syria and Iraq.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has regularly expressed since May his intention to conduct a military operation in northeast Syria, which is home to Kurdish fighters, in order to establish a 30 km safety area width along its southern border. PKK and YPG are considered terrorist movements by Ankara.
But if the Western allies of Turkey also consider the PKK as “terrorist”, the YPGs have been supported by the United States and France especially in the fight against the jihadists of the Islamic State group that they have hunted Kobane in a battle which has been famous in 2015.