The Turkish artillery shelled the city’s Jirenky neighborhood, reported Hawar News Agency (ANHA), a news outlet affiliated with the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES).
Faisal Osman, a resident of the neighborhood, told Rudaw on Monday that Turkish artillery targeted the neighborhood and wounded three civilians.
“At 9:30 am on Monday, Turkish artillery shelled our area; it resulted in wounding three civilians, and damaging civilian cars,” Osman claimed. “We are all civilians here.”
This comes after a car-bomb went off on a main road (Jinderes) in Afrin city in northern Syria on Monday, which wounded at least 10 people, including three members of pro-Turkish armed groups, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
“An explosive device has exploded under a military vehicle belonging to the ‘Failaq al-Sham’ [group] supported by the Ankara government, on the road of Jenderes in the city of Afrin, and the explosion wounded more than 10 people, including three armed members from the armed group,” SOHR reported on Monday.
Turkey and its Syrian proxies launched a military operation against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria in October 2019, seizing control of a stretch of northern Syria, known to Kurds as Rojava, including Sari Kani (Ras al-Ain) Gire Spi (Tal Abyad). Hundreds of thousands of civilians were displaced in the offensive.
The military offensive, dubbed “Operation Peace Spring”, followed the March 2018 invasion of Afrin, in Aleppo province, which came under control of Turkish forces and their Syrian militia proxies following two months of intense fighting with the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG). Since then, human rights monitors have accused these groups of serious violations against locals.
Turkey views the YPG, which forms the backbone of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The PKK has fought a decades-long guerrilla war with the Turkish state for greater cultural and political rights for Kurds in Turkey.
