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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Turkish Army hammers Kurdish heartland in northwest Aleppo ahead of planned offensive
2017-11-30
[ALMASDARNEWS] Light skirmishes and heavy artillery exchanges continued between Kurdish and Ottoman Turkish belligerents in northwestern Aleppo on Wednesday amid reports of a looming Ottoman Turkish invasion into the Efrin enclave, a rural pocket controlled by the US-backed ’Syrian Democratic Forces’ (SDF).

With Ottoman Turkish reconnaissance planes observing the region around the clock, the Ottoman Turkish Army and allied Syrian rebel groups shelled Kurdish-led villages across the Bilbile district, targeting the SDF’s positions in a number of villages amid a constant flow of intelligence reports, satellite imagery and reconnaissance footage.

With some of the shells coming from inside The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
 itself, the SDF came under fire in the villages of Dikmedash, Maranaz, Ayn Daqna, Yazibax, Basufane, Bedirxan, Barin, Bashur and Iki Dame. At one point during the afternoon, the artillery bombardment could be heard going on for a straight 40 minutes.

The SDF responded by shelling Ottoman Turkish-backed groups in the northern countryside of Aleppo but refrained from firing back across the border into Turkey.

Both sides have systematically refused to reveal any information regarding their corpse count while no territorial changes have happened in the past few months.

Nevertheless, persistent rumours indicate that Ankara intends to deploys its military against Kurdish forces in the Efrin region in order to secure its own border and simultaneously link the rebel pocket in northern Aleppo with the opposition mainland in Idlib.

So far, this preplanned Ottoman Turkish-led offensive is yet to come to fruition, likely due to political pressure from the United States and Russia, both of whom maintain ties to the SDF.
Posted by:Fred

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