Turkey carried out drone strikes in Syria on Thursday (October 5) against military targets and infrastructure in regions under Kurdish control, killing at least seven people, Farhad Chami, a member of the Democratic Forces, told Agence France-Presse Syrians (FDS). Turkey said it wanted to respond to an attack in Ankara on Sunday, in which two police officers were injured. The attack was claimed by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in armed struggle against the Turkish authorities since 1984.
“Seven workers were killed in the Turkish raids” which notably targeted two brickyards, said Farhad Chami. Most of the strikes took place in the province of Hassaké, under the control of the FDS, a coalition dominated by the Kurds and supported by the United States. Turkey had already launched airstrikes against the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan on Sunday evening and announced that it had arrested nearly seventy people linked to the Kurdish party in retaliation for the Ankara attack.
The leader of the FDS, Mazloum Abdi, for his part, on Wednesday denied accusations of possible involvement of Syrian Kurdish forces in the Ankara attack. “Turkey is looking for pretexts to legitimize its ongoing attacks against our region and launch new military aggression,” he said. In a statement Thursday, the autonomous Kurdish administration further called on “the international community, the international coalition” as well as Russia to “take positions capable of deterring” Turkey.
The FDS, supported by Washington, has spearheaded the fight against the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria. The State Department said the United States was “concerned about the military escalation in northern Syria” and called for “de-escalation.”
