12 Killed in Turkish airstrikes on northern Syria

Beirut, Nov 19 (EFE).- At least a dozen people were killed Saturday when Turkish warplanes bombed more than 20 targets in northern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.

Six fighters of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and six Syrian army soldiers died in the airstrikes, according to the SOHR, which is based in the United Kingdom but has a network of informants on the ground in Syria.

Several of the strikes were in Kobane, a city in Aleppo province that captured the world’s attention in 2014 as the scene of a brutal battle between Kurdish militias and the Islamic State.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claims that the order for last week’s bombing in Istanbul that left six people dead and 81 wounded originated with Kurdish commanders in Kobane.

Turkey says the bomb was planted by a Syrian women trained by the Kurdish YPG militias.

Ankara regards the YPG as a Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), classified as a terrorist organization.

The Kurdish organizations denied any connection to the blast in Istanbul and accused Erdogan of seeking a pretext for military action in Syria as a way of bolstering his parties prospects in Turkey’s 2023 elections.

Kobane, “the city that defeated the Islamic State,” came under bombardment by “planes of the Turkish occupation,” SDF spokesman Farhad Shami said on Twitter.

Bombs also fell on villages inhabited by people displaced from other parts of Syria by Turkish invaders and their allies, Shami said.

EFE

sr-njd/dr