ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Suspected Turkish shelling early Friday morning targeted several villages near the northern Syrian city of Manbij in Aleppo province, local media reported, a day after three people were killed by artillery fire.
The villages in the countryside west of Manbij came under fire at around 3:00 a.m., reported Hawar News Agency (ANHA), which is affiliated with the Kurdish administration in northeast Syria (Rojava).
ANHA said Turkey and Turkish-backed rebel groups carried out the strikes. It did not report any casualties.
In the same area west of Manbij on Thursday, “three civilians, including a woman and her brother, were killed in artillery fire by Turkish forces and their proxy factions,” according to the conflict monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Turkey has long viewed strategic Manbij, located at the crossroads connecting Aleppo, Raqqa, and the Kurdish-administered northeast, as key to its efforts to push Kurdish forces back from the border.
In 2022, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan labeled the Manbij and Tal Rifaat as Ankara’s next targets in order to complete its long-desired 30-kilometer “safe zone” along the border.
The Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) on Sunday launched a new offensive against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the armed wing of Rojava’s Kurdish administration, in northern Aleppo province.
There have been fierce clashes reported and more than 100,000 people, many of them already displaced because of conflict, have had to flee.
Turkey accuses the Kurdish forces of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the backbone of the SDF, of being the Syrian front for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Ankara has carried out three military operations against Kurdish forces in northern Syria since 2016, invading key towns near the border such as Afrin, Sari Kani (Ras al-Ain), and Gire Spi (Tal Abyad).
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