ERBIL // More than 20 people were killed when Turkey launched a series of air strikes against Kurdish militia groups in Syria and Iraq on Tuesday, attacking a key US ally in the fight against ISIL in Syria and escalating the standoff between rival Kurdish parties in Iraq.
Turkish warplanes struck positions of groups affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party, commonly known as the PKK, near the Syrian city of Derik and in the Sinjar area in northern Iraq in the early hours of Tuesday.
The air strikes killed at least 18 Syrian Kurdish troops, according to a monitoring group, as well as six members of the Iraqi Kurdish armed forces — known as the peshmerga — and drew swift condemnation from Baghdad.
The attacks in Syria targeted the headquarters of the Peoples' Defence Units, the Syrian Kurdish militia known as the YPG, on Mount Karachok near Derik, and the northeastern province of Hassakeh.
Syrian Kurdish forces said the strikes hit a media centre, a local radio station, a communication headquarters and some military posts, killing an undetermined number of fighters in Hassakeh, but the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the Syrian war, said 18 members of the YPG were killed.
The YPG is receiving training, equipment and air support from the US, and is advancing on the ISIL stronghold of Raqqa. It is widely regarded as ISIL's most capable opponent in Syria.
Due to its ties with the PKK, Turkey regards it a terrorist organisation that threatens its internal security.
"This treacherous death led to the death and wounding of a number of our comrades," the YPG general command said in a statement.
In Iraq's Sinjar, Turkey's air force targeted positions of the YBS, a Yazidi affiliate of the PKK. The strikes killed and wounded a number of its fighters, according to Zagros Hiwa, a PKK spokesman in Iraq.
Six members of the peshmerga also died in the attacks, and nine were wounded, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government.
The KRG and the PKK have been jostling for control over Sinjar ever since ISIL was expelled from much of the area in November 2015. Turkey has thrown its weight behind the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the dominant KRG party in Sinjar, in a bid to stymie the PKK's influence in the region near the Syrian border.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
* with additional reporting from Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
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