ISTANBUL — Turkish fighter jets carried out dozens of airstrikes in northern Syria and Iraq on Sunday, in what Turkish officers referred to as an antiterrorism marketing campaign to root out militants they accused of orchestrating a lethal bomb assault final week in Istanbul.
“The scoundrels are being held accountable for the treacherous assaults!” the Turkish Protection Ministry wrote on Twitter earlier than daybreak on Sunday in a publish with a photograph of a warplane taking off. The strikes focused shelters, tunnels, ammunition dumps and coaching camps, the ministry mentioned.
Greater than two dozen folks have been reported to have been killed, however totally different teams gave totally different numbers, and so they might not have acknowledged all of the fighters killed.
The Kurdish-led militia that administers northeastern Syria mentioned that 14 civilians and one fighter had been killed. The group, generally known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or S.D.F., vowed to strike again towards Turkey.
“These assaults won’t stay unanswered,” the S.D.F. Normal Command mentioned in a press release. “We are going to reply successfully and effectively on the proper time and place.”
The brand new violence was a pointy uptick in tensions between two forces which have lengthy hated one another and that each have shut relationships with the USA.
In Syria, the USA labored with the Syrian Democratic Forces to combat the Islamic State, and a small contingent of U.S. forces stays within the territory the group controls in northeastern Syria close to the Turkish border.
However that partnership has enraged Turkey, a U.S. ally in NATO, which views Syria’s Kurdish fighters as a part of the Kurdistan Employees’ Social gathering, which has fought a bloody, decades-long insurgency towards the Turkish state geared toward gaining independence or larger autonomy. Turkey, the European Union and the USA think about the rebel group, generally known as the P.Okay.Okay., a terrorist group.
After a bombing final week that killed six folks and wounded dozens on a busy pedestrian avenue in Istanbul, the Turkish authorities launched pictures of a girl who they mentioned had planted the bomb and accused her of working for the P.Okay.Okay. Dozens of different suspects have been arrested because the authorities search to uncover how the crime was dedicated.
The Istanbul bombing was the primary such assault in Turkey in additional than 5 years, and it raised fears that the nation might return to the times when its cities have been often focused by the P.Okay.Okay. or the jihadists of the Islamic State.
The S.D.F. in Syria and the P.Okay.Okay.’s navy wing have each denied any involvement within the Istanbul bombing.
In a press release on Sunday, the Turkish Protection Ministry mentioned its warplanes had hit 89 targets in northern Iraq and Syria, all navy infrastructure linked to the P.Okay.Okay. The marketing campaign aimed to “fend off terror assaults from northern Iraq and northern Syria, present border safety and destroy terror from its supply,” the ministry mentioned.
A video posted on the ministry’s Twitter feed confirmed the names of two Turkish youngsters who have been killed within the Istanbul assault written on bombs hooked up to fighter jets.
Farhad Shami, a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces in northwestern Syria, mentioned that among the many civilians killed have been a employee at an electrical energy station and two guards who have been defending grain silos, in addition to one S.D.F. fighter.
Additionally struck on Sunday was a pediatric hospital being constructed close to the Syrian metropolis of Kobani, Syrian Kurdish well being officers mentioned.
After the S.D.F. assertion about responding to the Turkish assaults, seven Turkish cops and one soldier have been wounded in a rocket assault close to a border gate on the Turkey-Syria border, Turkeys’s Inside Ministry mentioned, accusing Kurdish militants in Syria of launching the assault.
The S.D.F. didn’t instantly touch upon the rocket assault.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a bunch in Britain that tracks the battle by contacts inside Syria, mentioned the lifeless included one civilian, 14 S.D.F. fighters and 12 troopers from the federal government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
The Syrian state information company, SANA, mentioned solely that “a quantity” of its troopers had been killed in strikes on their bases in northeastern Syria.
Ben Hubbard reported from Istanbul, and Sangar Khaleel from Dohuk, Iraq. Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, and Safak Timur from Istanbul.