ISTANBUL, Turkey —
Turkey announced on Sunday it had carried out air strikes against the bases of
outlawed Kurdish militants across northern Syria and Iraq, which it said were
being used to launch “terrorist” attacks on Turkish soil.
اضافة اعلان
The overnight raids in northern and northeastern
Syria, primarily against positions held by
Syrian Kurdish forces, killed at
least 31 people, British-based war monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights said.
The offensive, codenamed Operation Claw-Sword, comes
a week after a blast in central Istanbul killed six people and wounded 81.
Turkey blamed the attack on the Kurdistan Workers’
Party (PKK), which has waged a bloody insurgency there for decades and is
designated a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies. The PKK has denied
involvement in the Istanbul explosion.
“Air Operation Claw-Sword was successfully carried
out, within the scope of our strategy to eradicate terrorism at its source and
eliminate terror attacks against our people and security forces from northern Iraq
and Syria,” the defense ministry said in a statement.
The strikes targeted PKK bases in northern Iraq’s
mountainous regions of Kandil, Asos, and Hakurk, as well as bases of the
Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), in Ayn Al-Arab (called Kobane in
Kurdish), Tal Rifaat, Jazira, and Derik regions in Syria, the ministry said.
Ankara considers the YPG as a PKK-affiliated terror
group.
Eighty-nine targets including shelters, bunkers,
caves, tunnels, ammunition depots, so-called headquarters, and training camps
belonging to the militants “were destroyed”, the ministry said, adding “many
terrorists were neutralized”, including their leaders.
A general view of “Free Woman” square in the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane, also known as Ayn al-Arab, on November 20, 2022. (Photo: AFP)
“All our planes safely returned to their bases after
the operation,” it added.
Defense Minister
Hulusi Akar was seen in a video
image briefing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who gave the order for the
latest operation, which the Syrian government said killed a number of its
soldiers.
The Istanbul bombing was the deadliest in five years
and evoked bitter memories of a wave of nationwide attacks from 2015 to 2017
that were attributed mostly to Kurdish militants or Daesh.
No individual or group has claimed responsibility.
Rocket attack
A rocket fired from Syria
left three people wounded on the Turkish border, the official Anadolu news
agency reported.
One Turkish soldier and two special forces police
officers were injured after the rocket fired by Kurdish militia forces fell on
the Oncupinar border gate area near the Syrian border, said the agency.
After the Istanbul explosion, Turkish authorities
arrested more than a dozen people, including chief suspect
Alham Albashir — a
Syrian woman who is said to have been working for Kurdish militants.
Bulgaria has also detained five people accused of
having helped one of the suspects.
“The hour of reckoning has come,” the Turkish
defense ministry tweeted early on Sunday, along with a photo of a plane taking
off for a night operation.
Nearly 25 air strikes hit the provinces of Raqa,
Hassakeh, and Aleppo, killing 18 members of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic
Forces (SDF), 12 members of Syria’s military and one journalist, according to
the Syrian observatory.
Kurdish authorities in northeastern Syria meanwhile
gave a toll of 29 dead — including 11 civilians, 15 fighters aligned with
Syria’s military, two silo guards and one Kurdish fighter.
Turkey’s military has in the past denied claims that
its strikes target civilians.
In its first comment on the Turkish strikes, the
Syrian defense ministry said “a number of soldiers” were killed due to “Turkish
aggressions in northern Aleppo and Hassakeh provinces at dawn”.
Complex ties with US
Turkey’s latest military push could create problems for Ankara’s complex
relations with its Western allies — particularly the US, which has relied mostly
on
Syrian Kurdish militia forces in its fight against Daesh extremists.
Turkey has often
accused Washington of supplying Kurdish forces with weapons.
Interior Minister
Suleyman Soylu rejected the US’ message of condolences after the Istanbul
attack, even though Erdogan accepted them during a meeting on Tuesday with
President Joe Biden on the margins of the
G20 summit in Indonesia.
Soylu has said
Ankara believes the order for the Istanbul attack was given from Kobane,
controlled by Syrian Kurdish militia forces, which have also denied any role.
Kobane, a
Kurdish-majority town near the Turkish border, was captured by Daesh in late
2014 before Syrian Kurdish forces drove them out early the following year.
The US-backed SDF
said the Turkish attacks would “not go unanswered”, in a statement.
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