Nine people, mostly fighters, were killed Thursday (July 30) in a car bomb attack on a Turkish-controlled checkpoint in northeastern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said ( OSDH). The explosion, which occurred in the village of Tal Halaf, west of the city of Ras al-Ain, also left 15 people injured, according to the NGO.
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Ras al-Aïn and its surroundings are controlled by the Syrian auxiliaries of Turkey after an offensive launched by Ankara in northeastern Syria in October 2019 to drive out the main Kurdish militia of the People's Protection Units (YPG). The Ankara offensive enabled it to take control at its border of a strip of territory 120 km long and about 30 km deep, stretching from the towns of Tal Abyad to Ras al-Ain. Numerous bombardments have since targeted the area.
Turkey wants to establish a "safe zone"
A motorcycle loaded with explosives killed two civilians and a fighter in Ras al-Ain on Tuesday. Two days earlier, another attack in a market in the same town had left eight dead, including six civilians, according to OSDH. The YPG was instrumental in the US-led coalition against the jihadist Islamic State (IS) group in Syria. But Ankara considers the YPG as a " terrorist " group and an extension of the Kurdish independence party PKK which has been leading an insurgency in southeastern Turkey since 1984.
Ankara halted its military operation in northeastern Syria after concluding two agreements with Washington and Moscow that provide for the withdrawal of the YPG from most of their border positions. Ultimately, Turkey wishes to establish a “ safe zone ” in northern Syria, with the objective of settling there some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees present on its territory. The war in Syria has claimed more than 380,000 lives and millions of refugees since it began in 2011 with the brutal crackdown on protests against the government.