File image.
On August 16, three Syrian soldiers were killed and six others were wounded when Turkish warplanes carried out a series of airstrikes on the outskirts of the town of Kobane in Syria’s northeastern region.
Kobane, which is located in the northeastern countryside of Aleppo, is a known stronghold of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) maintains a network of positions around the town, some of which were hit by Turkish airstrikes.
In a statement to the official Syrian Arab News Agency, a military source said that the SAA responded to the deadly Turkish airstrikes by targeting a number of positions of the Turkish military and its proxies.
“With the increase of provocations by the Turkish regime and the repeated attacks on different parts of Syrian territory, we affirm that any attack on any military point of our armed forces will be met by a direct and immediate response on all fronts,” the unnamed source said.
The deadly airstrikes were a response to an indirect fire attack that targeted a Turkish border post to the west of Kobane. Two Turkish soldiers were killed as a result of the attack, which was reportedly carried out by the SDF.
The SDF didn’t report any losses in its ranks as a result of the airstrikes on Kobane. However, its security service, the Asayish, said that a child was killed and five other civilians were killed in the airstrikes. The group also acknowledged that four of its fighters were killed in the outskirts of the town of Amuda in the northern countryside of al-Hasakah as a result of a Turkish drone strike.
This was the most serious military escalation northern and northeastern Syria have experienced since May, when the Turkish military and its proxies began preparing for a new operation against the SDF.
The unexplained Turkish attack on the SAA was surprising as it came following statements by top officials in Ankara, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, calling for rapprochement with the Damascus government.
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