Turkey Clashes With Kurds in Syria War

Turkish tanks returned from Syria on Saturday amid the  offensive against             Islamic State militants.

ISTANBUL—The death of a Turkish soldier in the newest battlefront of the Syrian war is stoking tensions between two U. S. allies, Turkey’s military and Syrian Kurdish rebels, heightening the risk to U. S. forces in the area and their common fight against Islamic State.

Syrian monitoring groups, meanwhile, said that at least 70 people were killed over the weekend, mostly civilians, in the Turkish operations. The Turkish military said it killed at least 25 “terrorists,” and didn’t comment on the reported civilian deaths, except to say that commanders are taking all necessary measures to protect noncombatants. It wasn’t possible to independently verify the Syrian casualty figures or the identities of those killed.

Turkey’s military struck deeper into Syria with airstrikes and artillery strikes on Sunday after the Turkish sol-

dier died and three others were wounded on Saturday when their tank unit came under attack by Kurdish rebels.

There was no immediate comment from U. S. officials about the escalation of fighting between the two sides— both of which are U.S. allies. It was unclear what role, if any, the U. S.- led coalition against Islamic State, of which Turkey is a member, had in the air campaign over the weekend.

The clashes underscore the complexity of the coalition’s campaign to reverse Islamic State’s territorial hold in Syria. American special operations forces are embedded with the YPG and earlier this month helped them oust Islamic State from the town of Manbij, less than 20 miles from Saturday’s hostilities. In general, those U.S. special operations forces have close contact with their Turkish counterparts, and they rely on Turkey for their rear supply lines, according to people familiar with the situation.

The U. S. also supports the Turkish- led campaign launched last week with Syrian Arab fighters who are rivals with the YPG. The initial goal of the operation was to clear Jarablus, along the Syria- Turkey border, of Islamic State positions and mop up any fighters that escaped Manbij, which is approximately 20 miles further south.

Turkish officials have said the timing of Operation Euphrates Shield was related to the fact that the YPG had broken a promise given to the Americans and Turks that the group’s units would withdraw from Manbij once it was liberated from Islamic State and allow local Arab-majority inhabitants to control the area. Instead of retreating to the east side of the Euphrates River outside Manbij, YPG in recent weeks has moved to expand westward, according to U.S. and Turkish officials.

Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist group and has a declared national security objective to prevent the YPG from linking up its disparate territorial holdings in Syria into a larger autonomous region. Turkey sees the YPG as an armed affiliate of a domestic Kurdish militant group known as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has been fighting Turkish forces for decades with the aim of achieving its own autonomous state.

Turkey wants to install the friendly Arab rebels fighting in its current operation along the Manbij- Jarablus corridor as a buffer against Kurdish groups. An estimated 1,000 Syrian Arab rebels are working with Turkey, which has at least 380 soldiers and 40 tanks inside Syria. Turkey handed over control of the border town of Jarablus to local Arabs after successfully ousting Islamic State last week.

On Saturday, some of the Syrian Arab units fighting with Turkish armor units said they were trying to seize villages south of Jarablus when clashes with rival YPG units broke out. Clashes reportedly were fiercest around the village of Amarneh, around 5 miles south of Jarablus.

Two Turkish tanks came under attack by YPG fighters armed with antitank rockets around 4 miles south of Jarab- lus, according to the Turkish state- run news agency Anadolu. One soldier was killed— the first Turkish soldier to die in the conflict—and three others wounded, it said. It didn’t give any more details about the location of the attack.

Syrian groups that monitor fighting and civilian death tolls reported casualties on at least two battlefronts south of Jarablus as a result of the weekend clashes.

Aleppo24 said that at least 28 civilians died in Turkish airstrikes, including people in Amarneh and a family from the neighboring village of Saressat. It also said that at least 19 fighters had been killed.

A second monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said at least 70 civilians were killed and wounded in Turkish airstrikes and shelling in the village of Jab al- Kousa, more than 8 miles south of Jarablus.

Turkish officials didn’t respond to questions about locations of their airstrikes inside Syria or how many bombing raids were carried out. The state news agency reported that the Turkish Military Joint Special Task Forces and coalition airplanes targeted on Saturday an ammunition depot, barracks and a command center used by “terror groups” south of Jarablus.

A statement from Turkey’s military, reported by Anadolu, said that the offensive was being carried out in accordance with international law and the United Nations’ mandate of self- defense. Turkey has suffered several terror attacks at home this year believed to have been carried out by Islamic State and the PKK.