Eight Turkish soldiers were killed and 13 wounded in operations in Afrin on Thursday, state-run Anadolu Agency reported, citing Turkish General Staff.
Three of the Turkish forces killed were members of the special forces recently deployed to Afrin, YPG-linked media ANHA reported. They were killed during heavy clashes over a hilltop in Rajo district, northwestern Afrin.
A number of Turkey’s Syrian proxy forces were also killed in two separate clashes in Rajo, according to ANHA.
The YPG and all-female YPJ killed an injured about 56 Turkish soldiers and allied Syrian fighters “in response to the attacks,” Abdulkarim Omar, a foreign affairs representative for Rojava’s Jazira canton, stated. He said the Kurdish forces also damaged a Cobra helicopter.
The YPG claimed to have destroyed at least two Turkish military vehicles in Rajo district on Thursday.
Twenty-three YPG fighters killed in action and one civilian were buried on Afrin on Thursday, ANHA reported.
Over Thursday night, at least 17 people were killed in a village in northern Afrin, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. Fourteen of those killed were pro-Syrian government forces, the Observatory detailed, along with three from the YPG.
Pro-regime forces entered Afrin last week and have deployed along the borders to help defend the canton.
The number of civilian casualties now stands at 207, co-chair of Afrin’s Health Council Angela Rasho stated on Thursday. Another 602 civilians have been wounded.
Rasho also expressed concern about humanitarian aid deliveries coming under attack. She stated that cars of the Syrian Red Crescent were targeted by Operation Olive Branch forces on their way into Afrin.
A humanitarian convoy of 29 trucks carrying enough aid for 50,000 people in Afrin and Tall Rifaat arrived in the canton on Thursday. The aid was delivered by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Syria and the Syrian Red Crescent. Neither aid agency reported their vehicles or staff coming under fire.
UN must 'take responsibility'
As heavy clashes continue five days after the UN Security Council adopted a resolution for a 30-day humanitarian ceasefire, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces are demanding the body take action to bring Turkey into compliance.
“We call upon the UN Security Council to abide by its decision, take its responsibility and apply a monitoring mechanism for the violations of the Turkish state and its allied extremist factions and force them to stop their invasion and subject them to the UN Security Council resolution,” Kino Gabriel, spokesperson for the SDF, demanded in a statement on Thursday.
He denounced Turkey’s claim that Afrin is not covered by the ceasefire as evidence of “Turkish ambitions to cut off parts of the Syrian territory in a colonial operation under fake claims and futile pretext.”
Turkey has welcomed the UN Security Council’s 30-day humanitarian ceasefire, but said the truce would not apply to the Afrin offensive, which Ankara has framed as a counter-terror operation.
Turkey launched its Operation Olive Branch on Afrin on January 20, describing it as a counter-terror operation. Ankara alleges the Kurdish groups, the armed YPG and the political party PYD, are branches of the banned PKK. The YPG and PYD deny the charge.
The YPG has stated that they will abide by the ceasefire, but reserve the right to act in self-defence.
US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert stressed that the ceasefire is “throughout the country,” including Afrin.
“I want to be clear also that there are a few exemptions to that ceasefire so no one tries to parse my words. Al-Nusrah, al-Qaida, and ISIS – those are the exemptions,” she told reporters on Thursday, later clarifying that entities associated with these groups or others designated by the Security Council are also exempt from the truce.
'It’s a joke'
Nauert acknowledged that “the ceasefire is clearly not working,” particularly in rebel-held Eastern Ghouta where she called Russia out on its “so-called humanitarian corridor” that she dubbed “a joke.”
Civilians in Eastern Ghouta have not chosen to evacuate the besieged enclave through humanitarian corridors established during daily five-hours halts to the bombardment of the area.
AFP reported that not a single of Eastern Ghouta’s 400,000 residents boarded a regime-supplied bus to leave the area.
Nauert posited that people are afraid, just as they were to take advantage of similar corridors established in Aleppo. “They are afraid if they try to leave Eastern Ghouta, that they could be conscripted into working with Bashar al-Assad, that they someday may not be able to go home, or they could be killed.”
She stressed that the nationwide full ceasefire must take hold and that the Department of State was pursuing several diplomatic avenues in an effort to see this realized.
The Russian military has stated that rebel forces are preventing civilians from leaving Eastern Ghouta, attacking a humanitarian corridor on Thursday and blocking an aid convoy from entering, Russia’s Interfax reported
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