Suspected Turkish drone strike kills SDF fighter in Kobane

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A suspected Turkish drone strike on the city of Kobane in northern Syria targeted a car belonging to a fighter of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Tuesday morning and resulted in his death, the force said. 

“A car that was carrying one of our fighters while he was spending the Eid al-Fitr holiday in the Kobane region was attacked by drones of the Turkish occupation, which led to his death,” a statement from the force read.  

According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), two members of the local Kurdish administration in the region were killed and a third was “seriously injured” in the strike.

The Observatory added that the attack marked the twelfth strike carried out by Turkey against areas controlled by Kurdish forces this year, killing at least 13 people. 

Turkey accuses the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), the backbone of the SDF, of being the Syrian wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group struggling for Kurdish rights in Turkey and named a terror group by Ankara. The YPG denies the charge.

On April 14, another suspected Turkish drone strike in northeast Syria’s (Rojava) Qamishli city killed a senior SDF member.

Earlier in April, a drone strike targeted a convoy of American military personnel and SDF General Commander Mazloum Abdi near Sulaimani airport in the Kurdistan Region. US Central Command (CENTCOM) is investigating the attack.