ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A suspected Turkish drone targeted a girls’ education centre in Hasaka province, northeast Syria (Rojava) on Friday, killing four children and injuring 11 other people, the Kurdish administration said later in the day.
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES) said in a statement on Friday that the region has seen a “new escalation of a systematic aggression” by Turkish forces.
“Today, the fascist Turkish state carried out a drone attack against a road between Tal Tamir and Hasaka, targeting a special education centre for girls which is supervised by the United Nations in the village of Shamuka, which is no more than two kilometres away from a base of the global coalition. The attack resulted in the death of four children and the wounding of 11 people - all of them girls,” read the statement.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) released an update on September 5, saying a fifth child who was severely injured in the attack had died.
The US-led global coalition against the Islamic State (ISIS) forces are based in northeast Syria, supporting the Kurdish forces in the fight against ISIS.
The Turkish defence ministry said in a tweet on Friday that the People’s Protection Units (YPG) fighters tried to attack their forces in northern Syria but Turkish forces attacked and were able to kill five members of the Kurdish force which is the backbone of the US-allied SDF.
It is not clear if both incidents were related.
Ankara has recently increased its attacks against Kurdish forces in Syria, and it threatens to carry out its third military base against them since 2018.
Turkey claims that the YPG is the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) - an armed group struggling for the increased rights of Kurds in Turkey. Ankara considers both Kurdish groups terrorist organizations.
The SDF and Turkish army have claimed the deaths of dozens of fighters from one another in recent days.
