Turkish-backed Syrian rebels advance into the border town of Ras al Ain as Turkey pursues a cross-border offensive against a Syrian Kurdish militia despite an outcry from the United States and European Union and warnings of possible sanctions
ANKARA/BEIRUT - Turkish-backed Syrian rebels advanced into Ras al Ain in northeast Syria on Saturday but it was unclear how far they had reached, with Turkey saying the town center had been taken and Kurdish-led forces denying this and saying they were counter-attacking.
The Turkish assault has raised alarm about its humanitarian fall-out. The regional Kurdish-led administration in Syria’s northeast said nearly 200,000 people had been displaced as a result, while the U.N. World Food Programme put the figure at more than 100,000 in the towns of Tel Abyad and Ras al Ain.
But the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces , in which the YPG comprises the main fighting element, swiftly denied losing the center of Ras al Ain. Turkish forces had overnight stepped up their bombardment of Ras al Ain in their incursion, after U.S. troops in the vicinity came under artillery fire from Turkish positions.In the latest international censure of the assault, Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Saturday called it an “invasion of an Arab state’s land and an aggression on its sovereignty”.
It was quieter at Tel Abyad, the operation’s other main target some 120 km to the west, with only occasional shelling heard in the area, a Reuters reporter said. Seventy-four Kurdish-led fighters, 49 Turkey-backed Syrian rebels and 30 civilians have been killed in the fighting, according to Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor.
Five IS militants fled a jail there, and foreign women from the group being held in a camp torched tents and attacked guards with sticks and stones, the SDF said.
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