Pentagon: Turkish airstrikes in Syria threaten security of US military

Recent Turkish air strikes in northern Syria have threatened the security of US troops and the escalating situation has jeopardized years of progress against Islamic State militants, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

“Recent airstrikes in Syria have directly threatened the safety of US personnel who are working in Syria with local partners to defeat ISIS and maintain custody of more than 10,000 ISIS detainees,” said Pentagon Spokesperson Brig. -Air Force Gen. Pat Ryder, in a statement.

The Pentagon said it was “deeply concerned” about the attacks in Iraq, northern Syria and Turkey.

Conflicts

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Tuesday that the army had hit 471 targets in Syria and Iraq since the weekend. His ministry quoted him as saying that 254 militants had been “neutralised”, a term generally used to designate malicious killings.

Ankara, Turkey’s capital, launched air strikes over the weekend in retaliation for a bomb attack in Istanbul a week earlier that killed six people and blamed it on the armed YPG organization. Nobody claimed responsibility and the PKK party and YPG denied involvement.

Turkey has previously launched military incursions into Syria against the Kurdish YPG militia, deeming them a wing of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey, the United States and the European Union designate as a terrorist group.

The commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by the YPG, Mazloum Abdi, said in an interview with the Al-Monitor news website that his hometown of Kobani would be the “real target” of any ground offensive, being of strategic importance. to Turkey by connecting areas in Syria that it already controls.

He criticized a “weak response” by Russia and Washington to Turkish airstrikes.

The United States has allied with the Syrian Democratic Forces in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, causing a deep rift with Turkey.