Eight Turkish soldiers killed in Syria offensive against Kurds

ANKARA: Eight Turkish soldiers were killed and another 13 were wounded in clashes in northwest Syria’s Afrin region on Thursday, Turkey’s armed forces said.

The military said the wounded soldiers had been“swiftly evacuated” to receive treatment. No further details were immediately available.

Turkey launched an offensive into Afrin in January against the U.S.-backed Kurdish YPG militia, which Ankara regards as a terrorist group linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state.

Since the start of the operation, Turkey has captured 115“strategic points” and 87 villages, according to state media, pushing Kurdish fighters back from the area near the Turkish border to effectively create a“crescent” of control on Syria’s side of the frontier.

Ankara says that major progress has been made in the operation, with hundreds of YPG fighters killed so far although it is not possible to verify these figures.

Last month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech that the Turkish forces were beginning to take mountain positions and would now head towards Afrin itself. “There is not much to go,” he said.

Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin meanwhile told journalists in Istanbul that the operation was going as planned but there was no timetable for its duration and it would “continue until we clear all those areas.”

But analysts and monitors say Turkey so far has taken control of limited clumps of territory around the border without yet approaching near Afrin town.

Turkey says the YPG is an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers´ Party (PKK) which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state.

But the YPG has been working closely with the United States to fight Daesh in Syria.

The offensive by Washington’s fellow NATO member Ankara on a US-allied force has even raised fears of a military confrontation between two alliance powers.