Flowers are laid in memory of the victims of the Istanbul bombing on November 13, 2022 – AFP
The Turkish army launched this Saturday (19) several bombings in northern Syria, which left at least 12 soldiers dead, both among Kurdish forces and members of pro-regime movements, according to the NGO Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) .
The attacks came days after Turkey blamed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) for the attack, which killed six people in Istanbul last Sunday.
“The time for reckoning has come. The bastards will have to settle accounts for their treacherous attacks,” tweeted the Turkish Ministry of Defense early on Sunday (Saturday night in Brazil), along with the image of a plane mobilized in a night operation.
“The nests of terror are demolished by precision strikes,” he added in another Twitter message, along with a video showing the crosshairs being locked on a target, which explodes shortly afterwards.
“Kobane, the city that defeated the Islamic State, is being bombed by the Turkish occupation air force,” warned Farhad Shami, spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), allies of the PKK in Syria.
According to OSDH, the Turkish bombings targeted SDF positions in the provinces of Aleppo (north), where Kobane is located, and Hasaka (northeast), its director, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP.
Turkey considers the People’s Protection Units (YPG) – the main component of the SDF – an extension of the banned PKK.
Both the PKK and the YPG have denied involvement in the Istanbul bombing.
The Turkish army also bombed positions of Bashar al Assad’s Syrian regime forces in Raqqa and Hasaka, he added.
In total, the bombings killed six members of the Kurdish SDF and six regime soldiers, according to OSDH.
Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu directly accused the YPG of being responsible for the attack and said that “the order for the attack was given from Kobane”.
This Kurdish-majority Syrian town, located close to the Turkish border, was occupied by the Islamic State extremist group in late 2014. Kurdish fighters expelled the group early the following year.
The US State Department on Friday expressed fears of “possible Turkish military action” and advised against traveling to northern Syria and Iraq.
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