Turkey has resumed shelling a Kurdish enclave inside Syria on the third day of a military campaign that the government says aims to create a “safe zone” across the border.

The fighting is ongoing in villages and towns around Afrin, which is controlled by the Kurdish Democratic Union party (PYD) and its military wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara says is the Syrian arm of a terror group that has fought a decades-long insurgency inside Turkey. The Turkish prime minister, Binali Yıldırım said the aim of the campaign, dubbed “Operation Olive Branch”, would be to create a zone inside Syria’s borders that was 30km (19 miles) deep. Turkish officials also said they wanted to significantly degrade the military capabilities of the YPG, which they say has 8,000 to 10,000 fighters in Afrin.

The “safe zone” would probably be secured and administered by Turkey’s Syrian rebel allies, creating a buffer zone with the Turkish border. Turkish officials have also hinted that it could be used as a safe area for civilians who wish to return to Syria, modelled on other parts of the country that Turkey had seized from Isis in an offensive called “Euphrates Shield” that was launched in the summer of 2016.

“First goal is to create a safe area there and then we can take concrete steps to eliminate terrorist elements,” Yıldırım said.

Afrin region map Afrin region map

Competing claims have emerged on both sides, with Turkey saying it has joined allied Syrian rebel fighters to take control of a series of YPG military points along the enclave’s outskirts.

A spokesman for the Kurdish militia said fierce fighting was ongoing amid intense artillery bombardment from Turkey’s border provinces of Kilis and Hatay. The YPG also claims to have launched counter-attacks on Syrian rebel positions.

There have been no credible reports of the total casualties on either side.

The US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, said Monday he was “concerned” about Turkey’s new offensive in northern Syria, as he urged all sides to show restraint.

“The US is in Syria to defeat Isis. We’ve done that with a coalition of partners and the [Kurdish-led] Syrian Democratic Forces, so we are concerned about the Turkish incidents in northern Syria,” he said ahead of a meeting in London with the UK foreign secretary, Boris Johnson.

But the US, he added, also recognised Turkey’s “legitimate right to protect its own citizens from terrorist elements that may be launching attacks against Turkish citizens on Turkish soil from Syria.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army fighters in the Syrian town of Azez near the border with Turkey. Photograph: Depo Photos/REX/Shutterstock

His statement was echoed by Johnson. “We understand that the Kurds have been instrumental in taking the fight to Daesh, and everybody appreciates that,” he said. “On the other hand, Turkey does have a legitimate interest in protecting its own border.”

The remarks stopped short of the level of criticism of Turkish actions voiced by the french foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian. France has convened a closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council for Monday deploring the “brutal degradation of the situation” in northern Syria. The Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, will travel to Paris for talks on Tuesday.

Yıldırım and the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have vowed the campaign would be swift, saying they would establish the safe zone and root out the militias, as well as rebuilding infrastructure and democratic institutions. But questions remain on whether they can dislodge the militias from the majority Kurdish enclave and whether locals are likely to welcome Ankara’s troops and proxy fighters.

Turkey has long regarded the growing power of the YPG in northern Syria as a national security threat. The militia spearheaded the ground campaign against Islamic State that was backed by the US-led coalition against Isis, and has essentially enjoyed a security umbrella from Washington, which supported the group with airstrikes and later with direct arms supplies.



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The YPG led the campaign against the city of Raqqa, the self-proclaimed capital of the Isis caliphate, successfully ousting the militants. The alliance with the US has created deep-seated tensions between Turkey and the US, the two largest armies in Nato, and Ankara intervened militarily in Syria in August 2016 to create a buffer zone that would halt Kurdish expansion west of the Euphrates river.

Russia, which had granted Turkey permission to begin the operation, pulling out its military from the area and allowing the use of Afrin’s airspace by Turkish warplanes, blamed the US on Monday for the crisis.

Turkey shells Kurdish enclave of Afrin in Syria – video



The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Washington had encouraged “separatist” sentiments among Syria’s Kurds, whom Turkey had long accused of wanting to establish a self-governing statelet in areas liberated from Isis. The Olive Branch operation came after a US announcement that it would build a border security force inside Syria that would include the YPG as a key component.