Attacks targeting Syria's northern Aleppo province originating from areas controlled by the PKK terrorist organization’s Syrian wing – the YPG – and the Bashar Assad regime have been ongoing, a local humanitarian group said late Saturday.
The White Helmets civil defense group earlier reported similar attacks by the YPG on Aleppo in recent days, while Saturday’s mortar shells hit farmlands on the outskirts of Aleppo’s Mara city.
Meanwhile, a rocket hit the Al-Omar oilfield Saturday in the Deir el-Zour province in eastern Syria where U.S. forces are stationed.
Local sources told Anadolu Agency (AA) that rocket fire targeted the Green Village area that surrounds the field. The Green Village is a residential area within the oilfield where weapons depots are kept and U.S.-led coalition forces reside.
While it is not yet known where the attack originated, sources reported that U.S. forces fired artillery and rockets towards where the attack was launched.
Turkey has on many occasions accused Western countries of turning a blind eye to the YPG's vicious attacks and blasted certain nations, such as the United States, for supporting the terrorist group.
The PKK is a designated terrorist organization in the U.S., Turkey and the European Union, and Washington's support for its Syrian affiliate has been a major strain on bilateral relations with Ankara. The U.S. primarily partnered with the YPG in northeastern Syria in its fight against the Daesh terrorist group; Turkey strongly opposes the YPG's presence in northern Syria.
Under the pretext of fighting Daesh, the U.S. has provided military training and given truckloads of military support to the YPG, despite its NATO ally's security concerns. Underlining that one cannot support one terrorist group to defeat another, Turkey conducted its own counterterrorism operations, over the course of which it has managed to remove a significant number of terrorists from the region.
Despite all these developments, the YPG continues to target residential areas and civilians in Afrin by using Tal Rifaat, located in the southeast of Afrin, as a base. Afrin was largely cleared of YPG terrorists in 2018 through Turkey's counterterrorism offensive Operation Olive Branch and has since been set on a path toward normalization with the restoration of several hospitals, schools and other vital facilities. Local people living in areas held by the YPG have long suffered from its atrocities, as the terrorist organization has a notorious record of human rights abuses, ranging from kidnappings, recruitment of child soldiers, torture, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement in Syria. The YPG has forced young people from areas under its control to join its forces as part of its so-called "compulsory conscription in the duty of self-defense."
Elsewhere, the White Helmets also reported that Russian attacks toward the last opposition bastion, northwestern Idlib, have been continuing. The group indicated that Russian warplanes and artilleries hit Albara in the south of Idlib.
Although a new truce was brokered between Turkey and Russia in March 2020 in response to months of fighting by the Russia-backed regime, which caused almost a million people to flee during the offensive, the regime and its ally continue to carry out attacks on civilians, hindering many from returning to their homes and forcing them to stay in makeshift camps.
The Idlib region is home to nearly 3 million people, two-thirds of them displaced from other parts of the country.
Nearly 75% of the total population in the opposition-held Idlib region depends on humanitarian aid to meet their basic needs, as 1.6 million people continue to live in camps or informal settlements, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
For years, the Assad regime has ignored the needs and safety of the Syrian people, only eyeing further territorial gains and crushing the opposition. With this aim, the administration for years has bombed civilian facilities such as schools, hospitals and residential areas, causing the displacement of almost half of the country's population.
