Turkey has turned a school in northern Syria back into an education center Thursday after it was used as a base by the Kurdish YPG militia.
The transformation came amid Turkey’s anti-terror operations in northern Syria.
A month of renovations at the school were just completed, said a Thursday statement by the governor’s office in Sanliurfa, southern Turkey, on the border with Syria.
The Nukra School in Ras al-Ayn, Syria has 13 classrooms and is ready for elementary and middle school students.
The statement said students were given clothing and stationery supplies, while local boys got free haircuts.
Old basketball equipment in the playground was replaced, and seeds were planted in the nearby garden.
Turkey and the National Syrian Army on October 9 launched a cross-border attack against Kurdish-held areas, grabbing a 120-kilometre-long (70-mile) swathe of Syrian land along the frontier.
The operation left hundreds dead and caused 300,000 people to flee their homes, in the latest humanitarian crisis in Syria's brutal eight-year war.
Turkey claims the YPG is a “terrorist” offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has fought an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984.
Ankara wants to set up a buffer zone on Syrian soil along the entire length of its 440-kilometre-long border, including to resettle some of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees currently in Turkey.
Eight years of war in Syria have killed 560,000 people and driven half the pre-war population of 22 million from their homes, including more than 6 million as refugees to neighbouring countries.
Zaman Al Wasl, AA
Zaman Al Wasl
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