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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The People’s Protection Units (YPG) on Thursday denied involvement in a Wednesday rocket attack which killed three people in the city of Afrin in northwest Syria.
“We have nothing to do with what happened in Afrin yesterday,” the YPG tweeted.
“Despite the fact that we have said multiple times that we have no forces in that area, the Turkish ministry has always tried to throw the blame on us for everything that happens there. Such claims are far from the truth.”
Thirteen rockets hit Afrin city centre on Wednesday, killing three people.
The governor of Turkey’s Hatay province, which lies across the border, immediately blamed the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish armed group, for the attack.
“The PKK/YPG terrorists attacked Syria’s Afrin city center at 14:30 today. Thirteen rockets were fired from Tel Rifaat area,” Hatay governor’s office said in a statement.
Tel Rifaat is in an area known as Shahba, north of Aleppo. The area houses thousands of Kurds displaced from Afrin and multiple forces operating in close proximity to each other, including Kurdish, Syrian regime, and Russian troops.
Turkey’s Ministry of Defense said their soldiers responded to the attack, and accused the YPG of killing civilians.
The YPG is considered by Ankara to be the Syrian extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), named a terrorist group in Turkey. Ankara has used this alleged link as a pretext for multiple military operations across the border into northern Syria.
The Kurdish force took control of the area after regime forces re-deployed to defend Arab-majority areas against rebels at the start of the Syrian uprising in 2011. In 2018, Turkey and its allied Syrian militias seized control of Afrin, forcefully displacing much of the local population and committing what the United Nations has said are possible war crimes against the local population. Turkey has blamed the YPG for several deadly explosions in the city.
In October 2019, Turkey launched an offensive against Kurdish forces in northeast Syria. Ceasefires were brokered by Moscow and Washington, but the truces are frequently violated.
Earlier this month, a father and his three children were killed in a Turkish bombing near Ain Issa. On Tuesday night, Turkey bombarded Zarkan district in Hasaka province, killing a woman and a four-year-old child.
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