The precarious humanitarian situation in several areas of northern Syria has deteriorated significantly in the last week due to Turkey’s bombing of Idlib province in the northeastern areas under the control of Kurdish militias allied with the United States and the Damascus government Hands of Islamist rebel groups. These military actions were launched in both cases in response to two terrorist attacks – in Ankara and Homs – but are taking their toll on the population, among whom they have caused dozens of deaths and tens of thousands of displaced people, as well as on civilian infrastructure. .
After the attack on the Interior Ministry in Ankara on October 1, in which two police officers were injured and the two attackers died (who had previously murdered a civilian to steal his car), Turkish forces launched an intensive bombing campaign in northern Iraq against the bases the Kurdish armed group PKK, which claimed responsibility for the attack. But three days later, the Turkish army changed its target to areas of northern Syria controlled by the Kurdish YPG militias, which have close ties to the PKK. “From now on, all PKK and YPG infrastructure, structures and energy facilities, especially in Iraq and Syria, are legitimate targets of our security forces, armed forces and intelligence services,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. head of the country’s secret services until last June.
A Turkish Defense Ministry spokesman said Thursday that “252 terrorists were neutralized last week” in northern Syria and Iraq. The Kurdish militias have denied these figures, claiming that Turkey killed at least “eleven civilians,” apart from an unspecified number of dead members. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), which is independent of both sides, has counted 45 dead in the Turkish bombings, half a dozen of them civilians and the rest members of the Kurdish militias or security forces.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who this week criticized Israel’s bombing of civilian infrastructure and hospitals in Gaza, has repeatedly reiterated that Turkish forces do not attack civilians in the fight against terrorism. However, the OSDH has denounced that recent Turkish bombings destroyed several power plants, oil facilities, civilian buildings and houses, which it considers a “war crime.”
This new Turkish offensive also threatened to lead to a clash with the United States – both countries have NATO’s two largest armies – as US forces shot down a Turkish drone involved in the bombing after it approached the site had approached within 500 meters of where they were parked. The leaders of both governments managed to defuse tensions after the incident, but Erdogan renewed his criticism of Washington for “training terrorists” and vowed not to forget the event: “There is no doubt that this incident has developed into… “Our nation is etched in memory, and of course the necessary measures will be taken when the time comes.”
Bombings in Idlib
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The Damascus regime’s latest offensive against the rebel province of Idlib was unleashed after weeks of tensions on the front line – frozen under agreements between Turkey, the rebel backer, and Russia and Iran, the regime’s main backers – and a brutal drone strike a military graduation ceremony in Homs (an area under the control of Damascus). The attack, which has not yet been assigned to any group, left at least 129 people dead, a third of them civilians, and more than a hundred wounded remain in hospital.
The Syrian government vowed to punish the attack “with all its might” and began an intensive campaign of air and artillery strikes on Idlib and parts of Aleppo province still under rebel control. According to local authorities, nearly fifty civilians died and nearly 300 were injured in the bombings. It also displaced 79,000 people in an area home to more than three million people, many of whom fled other parts of Syria during the civil war that has ravaged the country for more than a decade.
“Efforts to provide aid are hampered by ongoing hostilities,” said a statement from the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which operates in the region. According to Médecins Sans Frontières, at least three hospitals were hit by bombs and another 19 centers stopped providing non-essential services and “devoted themselves exclusively to emergency care, making access to health care even more difficult.”
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