ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Residents of an area where Turkish forces reportedly fired at US Special Force Friday night said they had been left to die while American troops were airlifted to safety.
Turkish forces reportedly fired at US troops on Mashtenour hill in Kobane, northern Syria, by mistake. Turkish shelling was so heavy that US personnel considered firing back in self-defense, a senior Pentagon official told Newsweek. The Turkish Defense Ministry issued a statement shortly afterward denying that its military had targeted US forces.
The Special Forces troops were immediately removed from the targeted area by helicopter.
Reporting just a few hundred meters from the US base on Saturday, Rudaw’s Rangin Sharo spoke to panicked locals who slammed American troops for failing to assist vulnerable people caught up in the shelling.
"Everyone rushed outside after hearing huge mortar bangs landing near our houses panicking everyone - children, elderly and women and our men," Ahmed Mohammed Hassan, 33, an eyewitness who chose not to flee despite the attacks told Rudaw. "The American forces brought in helicopters and removed their soldiers from here, leaving us behind."
"Where is humanity?" Hassan lamented. "They fled for their lives and left us here to die."
"Are these children not human beings?" he asked, pointing at three children surrounding him.
US forces did not return to their base until around 11:30 am the next day, according to Sharo.
Mustafa Aido, 40, another local, said the Turkish shelling resulted in an unknown number of casualties. He added that the mortar shells landed less than 200 meters from the US base.
"The explosions even burned the American flag hoisted in the courtyard of the base," the eyewitness said. "After the helicopters removed them, they came back today and put a new flag," Aido said.
"We will not abandon this land to anyone, no matter what. Let us die here," he added.
The Turkish Army and its Syrian rebel proxies launched Operation Peace Spring against Kurdish-led forces on Wednesday after receiving a green light from US President Donald Trump with the pull-out of American troops from two outposts on the Turkey-Syria border.
Turkey repeatedly threatened a military incursion to push the People’s Protection Units (YPG) away from the border and establish a “safe zone” up to 30 kilometers deep. The YPG make up the backbone of the multi-ethnic Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Khurshid Zaim, 35, fears Turkey won’t stop until it takes the whole Kurdish enclave of Rojava, and points to Kurdish sacrifice in the fight against Islamic State (ISIS).
"We were not terrorists for four to five years when we fought against the terror on behalf of the world," Zaim said.
