ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Kurdish security forces (Asayish) in northeast Syria (Rojava) on Friday said Turkish drone and heavy artillery fire targeting civilian sites killed one person and injured eight others.
The bombardment “targeted the Kobane silo, resulting in eight workers being seriously injured and one of them being killed,” read a statement from Asayish.
The overnight bombardments reportedly also targeted a hospital in Kobane, an Asayish checkpoint in Derik, as well as the village of al-Muhsinli and Aoun al-Dadat in the city of Manbij.
Suspected Turkish shelling in Manbij killed a child and injured three others on Thursday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“Turkish forces fired artillery shells on Al-Barhowin village, destroying a house, killing an 11-year-old girl and injuring her three brothers,” the UK-based war monitor reported.
The shelling followed an attack on an aerospace industries firm in the Turkish capital of Ankara on Wednesday that left five people dead and 22 others injured. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) claimed responsibility for the assault in a statement on Friday.
The attack “was carried out by an independent team of the Immortal Battalion. This historic act was carried out with high determination” read a statement from the People’s Defense Center (NPG), adding that “the heroes of this historical event are our comrades Asya Ali - Mine Sevjin Alcicek and Rojger Helin - Ali Orek.”
Turkey’s interior ministry on Thursday confirmed the identity of the assailants and said they were members of the PKK.
Late on Wednesday, Turkey said it launched strikes against PKK targets in the Kurdistan Region and Syria. The strikes killed 12 civilians across northeast Syria, according to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
The SDF retaliated against Turkey, saying their forces “conducted two successful operations targeting the bases of the Turkish occupation and its mercenaries” south of Sari Kani.
“These operations resulted in the elimination of several Turkish occupation soldiers and its mercenaries and the wounding of others,” read the SDF statement released on Thursday.
This surge of attacks came as there is a growing expectation that Turkey may restart peace talks with the PKK to bring an end to the 40-year conflict.
On Tuesday, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli proposed allowing the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been imprisoned since 1999, to address the Turkish parliament and declare that the PKK has been dissolved.
Bahceli, whose ultranationalist party is an ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), said that Ocalan should benefit from the “right to hope” principle that provides for the possibility of conditional release for prisoners, taking their behavior into account.
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