BEIRUT: Turkish air strikes on a Syria border post run by regime forces killed 11 Tuesday, following an overnight flare-up between Ankara’s forces and Kurdish fighters that control the area, a war monitor said.
“Eleven fighters were killed in a Turkish air strike that hit a Syrian regime outpost near the Turkish border,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, without specifying if the victims were affiliated with the Damascus government or Kurdish forces.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said “Turkish military aircraft have conducted 12 airstrikes against positions of the Syrian army deployed on the border strip west of Kobane,” a Kurdish-held town.
The raids caused “casualties”, SDF spokesman Farhad Shami said, without specifying how many. Syrian regime forces have deployed in areas controlled by Kurdish fighters near the border with Turkey as part of agreements intended to stem cross-border offensives by Ankara targeting Kurdish forces it views as terrorists. Tuesday’s raids followed overnight clashes between Ankara’s forces and the Kurdish-led SDF west of Kobane, said the Observatory, a Britain-based monitoring group that relies on a network of sources inside Syria. –Agencies
