At least one student was killed and seven others injured in a rocket attack on Afrin city in northern Aleppo province by the Kurdish People's Protection Units, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.
The Kurdish militia has targeted two schools and a mosque in Afrin’s city center with Grad missiles, the ministry said on Twitter.
The Turkish military and allied Syrian rebels took control of Afrin from the YPG in March 2018 after a two-month-long military campaign.
Turkey considers YPG as terrorists for their links to a decades-long Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey that has killed tens of thousands. The same fighters were the United States' partners on the ground in fighting the Islamic State group.
Syrian Kurds established an autonomous zone in war-torn Syria's northeast in 2012. Ankara has repeatedly said it would not allow a “terror corridor” along its borders and conducted two other cross-border military operations in northern Syria to break apart YPG-held territory. On all three offensives, the Turkish military has worked with Syrian opposition fighters, who have been accused of atrocities.
Ankara's Operation Peace Spring last October drew widespread international criticism and the U.S. was seen as abandoning the Kurdish force that had helped fight IS. Two ceasefires, brokered by the U.S. and Russia, required the Kurdish force to withdraw away from the Turkish border for Turkey to halt its offensive. Joint Russian and Turkish patrols were established.
Zaman Al Wasl, Agencies
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