The Turkish defense ministry said on Saturday morning it had “neutralized” 24 members of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) , a Kurdish armed group which makes up most of the SDF. Ankara regards the YPG as the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) - a designated terrorist group fighting for Kurdish cultural and political rights in Turkey.
“An infiltration attempt by [the members of] the terrorist organization of the PKK/YPG to disrupt the peaceful atmosphere and security of the Operation Peace Spring region was prevented by our heroic commandos,” read a tweet by the defense ministry.
Ankara uses the term “neutralized” to denote death, injury, or capture of its adversaries. The ministry has made other claims to have “neutralized” several more YPG fighters in recent days.
Turkey’s October 2019 launch of its so-called Operation Peace Spring against the SDF, when it seized control of the predominantly Kurdish northern Syria towns of Sari Kani (Ras al-Ain) and Gire Spi (Tel Abyad), was the latest in a succession of campaigns against the Kurdish-led group in the country.
Clashes between Ankara’s and the SDF persist despite two Turkish ceasefires in the region, one with the US and the other with Russia, both agreed upon at the end of October 2019. Local media outlets and a monitor group with on the ground sources have reported fierce fighting between the two sides in recent days.
The SDF-affiliated Hawar News Agency (ANHA) reported occurrences of several clashes between both forces in the first days of April. Though neither SDF nor Turkish personnel casualties were reported by the outlet, it did report the death of two Syrian regime force members and injuries of other people when Ankara bombed a number of villages in the western countryside of Gire Spi.
Syrian state media outlet SANA reported fresh Turkish bombing in the Hasaka province town of Tal Tamr on Saturday. Though no regime force casualties were reported, a local electricity official told the agency that the bombardment led to power outages in the northeast Syrian province.
Elsewhere in the country’s north, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported unrest in the city of Aleppo on Saturday, where clashes “coincided with exchange of fire with artillery and heavy machine guns, leaving casualties in the ranks of both warring sides.” The Britain-based war monitor has reported similar clashes between the two forces elsewhere in northern Syria in recent days.
Ceasefires elsewhere in northern Syria, including an agreed halt to fighting in Syria’s last rebel bastion of Idlib between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, have also been jeopardized.
A March 5 ceasefire sought to end clashes between the Turkish-backed rebels and Turkey on one side, and Russia-assisted Syrian regime forces and their allied groups on the other. Scores of fighters from both sides were killed in the weeks leading up to the ceasefire, including nearly 60 soldiers – to which Ankara responded with the deployment of thousands more troops to Idlib to conduct attacks against Syrian regime forces.
The ceasefire initially appeared to bring a rare calm to the embattled province, though sporadic, small-scale clashes continued.
However, two Turkish soldiers were killed by "radical groups" in Idilb on March 19 – just two weeks after the ceasefire’s initiation.
