Eleven civilians, all members of the same family, including six children, were killed in a Turkish drone strike targeting a house in a village in northern Syria, in an area under Kurdish administration, an NGO said on Monday.
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The victims were killed “near Ain Issa, north of Raqa, in areas controlled by the autonomous Kurdish administration,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
The day before, at least 26 fighters were killed as Syrian factions, backed by Turkey, launched an offensive in the Manbij region, also held by the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and controlling large areas. from the Syrian North-East.
Pro-Turkish groups declared on Sunday that they had “taken control of the town of Manbij east of Aleppo after fierce battles”, in a statement published on their Telegram channel.
At the beginning of December, pro-Turkish fighters had already recaptured the Kurdish enclave of Tal Rifaat, located on the edge of a “security zone” occupied by Turkey in northern Syria.
This attack took place after rebels led by Islamists launched a lightning offensive which enabled them to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.
This shift is an opportunity for Turkey to move away from its border the FDS, allies of the West in the fight against the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) but considered by Ankara as an emanation of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), his sworn enemy.
The civil war sparked in 2011 by the bloody repression of pro-democracy demonstrations has divided Syria. The rebels have retaken the majority of the territory, after their lightning offensive, which ended Sunday with the flight from the country of the deposed president, 50 years of rule by the Assad family.
Ankara, which regularly carries out strikes against areas controlled by the FDS, says it wants to prevent Kurdish fighters from extending their influence in Syria “by taking advantage of the situation”.
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