The overnight strike on Kurdish fighters was in retaliation for a rocket attack.
ISTANBUL: Turkey’s military “neutralised” 26 Kurdish militants in northern Syria overnight in retaliation for a rocket attack on a Turkish base, the defence ministry said today as conflict escalated nearly a week after a bomb attack in Ankara.The rocket attack on the base, by the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, killed one Turkish police officer and wounded seven officers and soldiers in northwest Syria’s Dabiq area on Thursday evening, Ankara said.
The defence ministry said Turkey separately conducted air strikes and destroyed 30 militant targets elsewhere in northern Syria, including an oil well, a storage facility and shelters. The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party claimed responsibility for Sunday’s bombing in Ankara that left the two attackers dead and wounded two police officers.Turkey lists the YPG as a terrorist organisation and says it is indistinguishable from the PKK, which has fought an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 in which more than 40,000 people have been killed.The YPG is also at the heart of the SDF forces in the US-led coalition against Islamic State militants.
Underscoring the tension, the Pentagon said the US had yesterday shot down an armed Turkish drone that was operating near its troops in Syria, the first time Washington has brought down an aircraft of Nato ally Turkey. A Pentagon spokesman said Turkish drones were seen carrying out airstrikes in Hasakah, northeast Syria, and one drone came within less than 500m of US troops, was deemed a threat and shot down by F-16 aircraft.However, a security source said Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency had carried out strikes in Syria against Kurdish militant targets.Turkey has mounted several previous incursions into northern Syria against the YPG.
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