Turkey shells pro-Assad militias entering Afrin to aid Kurdish rebels
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s warnings fail to deter groups loyal to Damascus from entering the region where Turkey is fighting Kurdish forces, risking a new front line in the spiraling Syrian conflict.
Turkey opened fire on hundreds of fighters loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The fighters arrived in the Kurdish-controlled Syrian province of Afrin on Feb. 20, news reports said, as Damascus disregarded Ankara’s warnings against coming to the aid of the Syrian Kurdish militia fighting a Turkish military assault.
The confrontation came just hours after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he had prevented any such incursion by Syrian government forces after speaking to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Syria’s benefactors, and that Turkish troops and their allies in the Free Syrian Army (FSA) would besiege the provincial capital in a matter of days.
