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Turkey began its first wave of artillery fire targeting Kurdish fighters in Afrin, Syria on Tuesday night, said an Al Arabiya reporter.
This comes as a retaliation to the Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG) firing a large number of missiles targeting settlements in the Azaz region bordering Turkey and Syria, which is controlled by the Turkish-backed opposition Free Syrian Army, media reports said.
Ukraine’s military said on January 12 that one of its soldiers was killed and four wounded in clashes that took place in the eastern part of the country during the previous 24 hours.
A Defense Ministry statement said Russia-backed separatists violated a frequently breached cease-fire nine times in skirmishes where separatists fired machine guns, grenade launchers, and mortars.
The Turkish army is preparing to unleash an offensive against the Kurdish-controlled Afreen region in northern Syria, pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV reported on Sunday.
The Turkish army has set up field hospitals in a Turkish border area of Kumlu close to Syria’s Idlib province in northwestern Syria as part of the preparation to wage an offensive on Afreen in the countryside of Aleppo province in northern Syria, said the report.
Ukrainian authorities and separatist rebels have agreed on a major prisoner exchange.
Separatist leaders and a Ukrainian government representative said in televised comments on Monday that they would exchange prisoners on Wednesday. They spoke after a meeting in Moscow mediated by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Italy will retreat half of its 1,500 troop contingent in Iraq and send them to Niger to take part in a new international military mission, Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti said Sunday in an interview.
“We will halve our presence there,” Pinotti told the La Repubblica newspaper, as quoted by DPA.