Heavy fighting between Syrian Kurdish forces and Turkish-affiliated proxies near the northeastern city of Aleppo left more than a dozen people dead or injured, including combatants and civilians, an international war monitor reported Sunday, according to the MediaLine.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which relies on sources and informants within Syria, said the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched an offensive on Turkish-held positions along the Al-Daghlabash frontline in the Aleppo countryside.
Fifteen fighters from the Ankara-backed Liberation and Construction Movement militia and other allied groups were killed during the “violent clashes,” which involved “heavy and medium weapons,” according to SOHR.
Throughout the day, SDF and Turkish-backed forces exchanged heavy fire in villages and cities within the “Euphrates Shield” area, with local sources reporting multiple civilian deaths and injuries.
The “Euphrates Shield” refers to a zone in northern Syria that the Turkish army invaded and occupied before nominally withdrawing troops in 2017.
Earlier Sunday, Turkish artillery fire on the village of Halysah, north of Aleppo, killed a 40-year-old displaced man and injured three children, aged nine, 13, and 14, the war monitor said. Rockets fired from SDF-held territory reportedly killed two civilians and injured 12 others in Turkish-controlled Al-Bab city.
FDD: Turkish Strikes Leave 1 Million in Northeast Syria Without Electricity, Water
Fighting between Kurdish forces and Turkey’s proxies may be triggered by claims of Turkish strikes in northeast Syria, which allegedly have left more than 1 million people in northeast Syria without access to electricity and water, the BBC reported on November 19. Between October 2019 and January 2024, Turkey carried out more than 100 strikes against oil fields, gas facilities, and power stations in Kurdish-held northeast Syria. The co-director of a local water board described the conditions as “a humanitarian catastrophe.”
“Erdogan is engaged in a purposeful campaign to target civilians in Syria under the guise of counterterrorism operations. The targeting of civilian infrastructure only exacerbates an already dire humanitarian situation. Erdogan sees a failed normalization effort with Assad and a likely U.S. withdrawal from Iraq as an opening to target the Kurds without repercussions”, stated Tyler Stapleton, Director of Congressional Relations at FDD Action.
Indeed, Erdogan had threatened Syrian Kurdish military-political entity PYD-YPG with a new military campaign, if it refuses to disarm and renounce its ties to terror organization PKK. Several analysts think Erdogan will once again send the Army to attack Syrian Kurdish cantons soon, to force the incoming Trump administration to withdraw its forces from the country and gain leverage on Assad, who refuses to discuss a peace agreement with Ankara.
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