A Turkish drone strike killed three employees of northeast Syria’s semi-autonomous Kurdish administration on Tuesday, June 20, 2023,
This is occuring amid a recent uptick in attacks targeting Kurdish-held areas.
The administration’s de facto army spokesperson for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Farhad Shami said the strike targeted a vehicle transporting civilian employees, killing two Kurdish women and a Christian man.
He added that a fourth employee was wounded.
The US-supported SDF led the battle that dislodged Islamic State (IS) group fighters from the last scraps of their Syrian territory in 2019.
Turkish government considers the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which dominate the SDF, to be an offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), designated as a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies.
Since 2016, Turkey has carried out successive ground operations to expel Kurdish forces from border areas of northern Syria.
Syria’s 12-year war broke out after President Bashar al-Assad’s repression of peaceful anti-government demonstrations escalated into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and global jihadists.
The conflict has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions.
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