Two Turkish soldiers were killed in action on Thursday and Friday amid Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring in northern Syria.
Two fallen soldiers, a specialized sergeant and an infantry private, died amid clashes with the People’s Protection Units (YPG) terrorist group, the National Defense Ministry announced Friday.
Turkey launched its long-mooted offensive in northeast Syria on Wednesday, defying an international outcry over the threat posed to US-backed Kurdish forces and the campaign against Islamic State.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the operation – code named Peace Spring – would “eliminate the terror threat towards our country” from Kurdish militants and Islamic State jihadis.
Turkey’s military struck the Syrian-Iraqi border to prevent Kurdish forces using the route to reinforce northeast Syria, as Ankara prepared to attack there following a surprise U.S. troop pullback, Turkish officials told Reuters on Tuesday.
Turkey says it is ready to advance into northeast Syria now that the United States has begun withdrawing troops from the Turkey-Syria frontier in an abrupt policy shift by U.S. President Donald Trump widely criticized in Washington as a betrayal of America’s allies, the Kurds.
Turkey-backed Syrian rebels pledged on Friday to back a potential cross-border offensive that Ankara has threatened to mount against Kurdish fighters in northeast Syria.
Ankara and Washington have agreed to set up a zone in northeast Syria along the border with Turkey, which wants to expel the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia from the frontier.
For the fourth time this week, the Syrian Arab Air Force (SyAAF) unleashed a major assault across the northeastern countryside of the Latakia Governorate, which is mostly under the control of the jihadist rebels.
According to a military source in the Latakia countryside, the Syrian Air Force launched several strikes over the town of Kabani and its surroundings, hitting a number of targets belonging to the Turkestan Islamic Party and Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham.