Turkey increased its drone strikes Thursday against targets in Kurdish-held areas in northern Syria, killing at least 10 people across the region, local officials said.
A VOA reporter in Qamishli, Syria, reported that at least 18 drone attacks were carried out across northern Syria. Some of the attacks targeted civilian infrastructure in the region, including one on a power station and another near a camp hosting internally displaced people, the Kurdish Red Crescent said.
The increased attacks come days after the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) claimed responsibility for a bomb attack that targeted Turkey’s Interior Ministry headquarters in Ankara. The Sunday attack left the two attackers killed and two Turkish police officers wounded.
The Turkish government views Syrian-based Kurdish groups as an extension of the PKK, which is considered a terrorist organization by Ankara and Washington. But the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and its main group, the People’s Protection Units, (YPG) have been major U.S. partners in the fight against IS, also known as ISIS.
Turkey said the two individuals who carried out the recent attack in Ankara had come from Syria. But Syrian Kurdish officials deny that.
“Those two attackers were citizens of Turkey,” Siyamend Ali, a spokesman for the YPG, told VOA in an interview. “They had not crossed [into Turkey] from Syria. These claims are false.”
A U.S. State Department spokesperson said Washington continues to advocate for de-escalation in northern Syria.
“We recognize the legitimate security threat that the PKK poses to Turkey. The U.S. also remains concerned about the military escalation in northern Syria. In particular, we are concerned about the impact on civilian populations and the effect that it could place on the efforts that are ongoing to defeat ISIS,” Vedant Patel, State Department deputy spokesperson, told reporters during a press briefing on Wednesday.
A Turkish Defense Ministry official said Thursday that Turkey could consider a new ground operation into Syria. Turkey has carried out several ground offensives against Syrian Kurdish groups in recent years.
This story originated in VOA’s Kurdish Service. VOA’s Zana Omer in Qamishli, Syria, and Robin Rushmore in Washington contributed to this story. Some information came from Reuters.
