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Turkish-Led Troops Invade Strategic Syrian Town Syrian Arab Fighters Backed by Turkey Kill Two Kurdish Prisoners
(about 4 hours later)
AKCAKALE, Turkey — Turkish-led troops made the first significant strategic breakthrough of their invasion of the Kurdish-held region of Syria on Saturday morning, entering a border town that had been the focus of a ground war between Turkey and Kurdish fighters since Wednesday. Turkish-backed Syrian Arab fighters killed at least two Kurdish prisoners on Saturday, one of them lying on the ground with his hands bound behind his back, in a powerful illustration of the forces unleashed by President Trump’s decision to pull back American troops shielding former Kurdish allies in northern Syria.
The Turkish Defense Ministry announced that its forces had taken part of the town, Ras al-Ain, which nestles up to the border with Turkey on a road connecting the eastern and western wings of Kurdish-held territory. If they capture the entire town, the Turkish forces would control one of the two main roads that link the major Kurdish-controlled cities, making it harder for Kurdish forces to move troops and supplies. A video that captured one of the killings shows two of the Turkish-backed group’s fighters firing bullets at close range into the man with his hands tied while their colleagues shout “God is great!" The second prisoner who was killed appears in the video alive and wearing a military uniform, but he is missing from the group’s later social media post about its captives.
Footage broadcast on Turkish television showed members of a Syrian Arab militia, fighting under Turkish command, in the streets of the seemingly abandoned town. But Kurdish-led forces said they were still present in another part of Ras al-Ain. “The guy in the military outfit was neutralized,” said Al-Harith Rabah, a media activist with the Arab fighters who was at the scene.
Turkish troops and their Arab allies were pushing to take a second strategic border town, Tel Abyad, 75 miles to the west, and an advance group briefly reached a second major supply route, roughly 20 miles inside Syria, before quickly retreating. The Turkish government says its incursions have so far been relatively small, with soldiers holding territory only a few miles inside Kurdish territory. Its aerial bombardment has affected a much wider area. The killing of two Kurdish captives by Arab fighters — a possible war crime — is an indication of the ethnically tinged hatreds flaring in the wake of President Trump’s pullback of American forces in the area. The move cleared the way for a Turkish military incursion into a northern Syria border area aimed at rooting out the Kurdish-led militia that had been the key American-allied ground force helping to wrest territory from the Islamic State.
The invasion, which entered its fourth day on Saturday, has compounded the complexity of the civil war in Syria, disrupted a campaign to drive out the Islamic State from Northern Syria, prompted a new wave of displacement and put at risk American troops working with the Kurds on counterterrorism missions. On Saturday, Turkey and its allied Syrian fighters established a foothold in a strategic Syrian border town, Ras al-Ain, and were gathering to launch an offensive against another, Tel Abyad, according to the Turkish Defense Ministry and a spokesman for the Turkish-backed fighters.
The invasion has prompted a threat of crippling United States sanctions and a wave of international criticism — the latest from the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, who on Saturday announced that his country would block future exports of weapons that could be used by Turkey in northeast Syria. The new hostilities have displaced at least 100,000 people and ignited fears that tens of thousands of ISIS fighters and their relatives held by the Kurds could escape their camps and prisons.
Turkey says it wants to create a buffer zone from the border into Syrian territory that is controlled by a Kurdish-led militia. The militia has close links to a guerrilla movement that has been fighting a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state. The two captives were killed early Saturday after the militant group Ahrar al-Sharqiyeh, which had entered Syria from Turkey, took control of a main road through the territory and began stopping passing cars, according to Mr. Rabah, the media activist.
But that has upended efforts to contain the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, which seized large swathes of Syrian land amid the turmoil of the early years of the Syrian civil war. The ISIS militants were later forced from northern Syria by the Kurdish militia, in partnership with American troops. When military vehicles belonging to the Kurdish-led militia passed, the militants stopped them, at times getting into clashes, he said.
But distracted by the invasion, the Kurdish authorities have diverted resources away from counterterrorism operations, leaving their territory more vulnerable to the sleeper cells of a resurgent ISIS. Also killed on a main road through the territory was Hervin Khalaf, the head of a Kurdish political party. Kurdish officials accused Turkish-allied Arab fighters of attacking her car, a charge a spokesman for the Arab fighters denied.
“We are now fighting on two fronts — one front against the Turkish invasion and a front against” the Islamic State, a Kurdish military official, Redur Xelil, said at a news conference on Saturday afternoon in Al Hasakah. Mr. Rabah said his group killed nine Kurdish fighters, he said, without specifying whether the two prisoners were among them.
The extremist group has already claimed responsibility for a car bomb in Qamishli, the regional capital, that exploded on Friday. A second car bomb exploded in the early hours of Saturday in the city of Al Hasakah, outside a prison containing Islamic State militants. When asked about the video showing the Turkish-allied fighters shooting the bound prisoner, Mr. Rabah grew nervous and said he had been trying to stop them from shooting.
The Kurdish authorities are guarding 11,000 Islamic State fighters and their families, but the already limited ability to secure them is now under further threat. Turkish airstrikes near a prison in Qamishli on Friday allowed five Islamic State prisoners to escape Kurdish custody. “Everything happened so fast,” he said
Relatives of Islamic State fighters attempted a second breakout from a camp farther to the south, but were caught, the Kurdish authorities said. In the video, the fighters call the captives “pigs” and shout “God is great!” as two of them shoot the bound captive.
The Syrian government also used the opportunity to attack Kurdish-held territory near Manbij, government and Kurdish officials said on Saturday. Mr. Rabah said that the second prisoner’s identification card linked him to a Kurdish security force, and that the Turkish-backed group had killed him after he tried to flee.
United States troops fell under Turkish artillery fire on Friday night, the Pentagon confirmed, escalating a disagreement between American and Turkish officials about the scale and scope of the invasion. “You know in the law of war, it is O.K. to kill anyone who is a threat,” he said.
American troops had vacated part of northern Syria around Ras al-Ain earlier in the week, giving implicit approval for a Turkish invasion of that area. But a video published by the militant group on Twitter shows that same prisoner sitting passively on the side of the road, dabbing blood from his nose as if he has just been hit.
But United States forces remain in other parts of Kurdish-held Syria to continue counterterrorism operations against the Islamic State, and they have opposed expanding the Turkish invasion beyond a sliver of land at the center of Kurdish-held territory. The video with the fighters shooting the bound prisoner shows three other prisoners, including the one in the military uniform. But in a later post on the group’s Twitter feed announcing its captives, there are only two in the photo. The prisoner in the uniform is not among them.
That has failed to deter the Turkish Army from bombarding Kurdish-run cities all along the border, endangering American troops posted there.
On Friday night, the Pentagon announced that a group of American troops had narrowly avoided being hit by Turkish artillery fire in Kobani, a border city in the west of Kurdish-held territory, despite providing their coordinates to Turkish counterparts.
United States military officials said privately that they are convinced that Turkish forces had deliberately targeted the area to encourage the American military to leave the area altogether. Turkey’s incursion into northern Syria comes more than eight years into a civil war that has shattered the country and pulled in Russia, Iran, Turkey and the United States, all of which have forces on the ground backing their local Syrian allies.
“The Turks knew we were there,” said one American officer who has served in northeastern Syria and who has access to confidential intelligence reports on the Turkish offensive. The officer said the Turks wanted the United States personnel moved south of a major highway that connects western and eastern Kurdish cities to allow Turkish forces unrestricted access to the road. The United States has long backed a Kurdish-led militia in the country’s northeast called the Syrian Democratic Forces, or S.D.F., which played a key role in the battle against the jihadists of the Islamic State and took over much of the territory it once controlled.
But the rise of Kurdish autonomy across its southern border angered Turkey, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had threatened to send Turkish forces into Syria to root out Kurdish militants long before Mr. Trump acquiesced to the idea on Sunday.
To prepare for the incursion, Turkey supported groups of predominantly Arab fighters in Syria who also oppose the S.D.F. In videos posted as the incursion began, the fighters sometimes referred to Kurdish forces as pigs and used religious battle language to justify fighting them.
Previously, the roughly 1,000 United States troops posted in northeastern Syria formed a buffer between the Arab militants and Kurdish fighters, running daily patrols to keep them apart.
But that buffer collapsed with the Turkish incursion because Turkey began bringing Syrian Arab fighters across its border directly into the Kurdish-controlled zone. It was one such group that carried out the killings on Saturday.
Turkey’s entrance into Ras al-Ain on Monday marked the first significant strategic breakthrough of its incursion. The town sits on the border with Turkey on a road connecting the eastern and western wings of Kurdish-held territory.
Capturing the rest of the town would allow Turkish forces to control a main link between the border towns, making it harder for Kurdish forces to move troops and supplies.
Footage broadcast on Turkish television showed Syrian Arab fighters in the streets of the seemingly abandoned town. But Kurdish-led forces said they were still present in another part of Ras al-Ain.
Turkish troops and their Arab allies were pushing to take a second strategic border town, Tel Abyad, 75 miles to the west, and an advance group briefly reached a second major supply route, roughly 20 miles inside Syria. The Turkish government says its incursions have so far been small, with soldiers holding territory only a few miles inside Syria. Its aerial bombardment has affected a much larger area.
The invasion has prompted a threat of crippling United States sanctions and a wave of international criticism — both Germany and France said on Saturday that they would block future exports of weapons to Turkey that could be used in Syria.
Turkey says it wants to create a buffer zone on the Syrian side of the border to protect itself from the Kurdish-led militia. The militia has close links to a guerrilla movement that has been fighting a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.
But that has upended efforts by the United States and the Kurdish-led militia to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Since the incursion began on Wednesday, Kurdish leaders have pulled their fighters away from counterterrorism operations to fight the Turks, leaving the territory vulnerable to ISIS sleeper cells.
“We are now fighting on two fronts — one front against the Turkish invasion and a front against” the Islamic State, a Kurdish military official, Redur Xelil, told reporters on Saturday.
The extremist group claimed responsibility for a car bomb in Qamishli, a large border city, on Friday. Turkish airstrikes near a prison in Qamishli on Friday allowed five ISIS prisoners to escape. A second car bomb exploded Saturday in the city of Al Hasakah outside a prison holding ISIS militants.
On Friday night, the Pentagon announced that a group of American troops had narrowly avoided being hit by Turkish artillery fire in Kobani, a border town, despite providing their coordinates to Turkey.
United States military officials said privately that they were convinced Turkish forces had deliberately targeted the area to encourage the American military to leave.
The Turkish Defense Ministry acknowledged that shells had fallen near American forces, but said its troops had been aiming at Kurdish fighters in the area.The Turkish Defense Ministry acknowledged that shells had fallen near American forces, but said its troops had been aiming at Kurdish fighters in the area.
The bombardments have spurred a fresh wave of displacement, with more than 100,000 residents of Kurdish-held Syria fleeing south, away from the Turkish border, according to United Nations estimates. Syrian fighters backed by Turkey gathered on the outskirts of Tel Abyad, the next big objective for Turkey, said Sohaib Jaber, a spokesman for the group.
On Saturday, a group of Turkish men played cards and smoked in a cafe in the Turkish border town of Akcakale, some 75 miles west of Ras al-Ain, as news of the capture of the Syrian town played on television. The Syrian fighters encountered fierce resistance from the Kurdish militia on the eastern edge of Tel Abyad on Saturday and pulled back to allow Turkish snipers to go in, he said. As several hundred fresh Syrian fighters rode in a convoy of buses through the town of Akcakale after dark to join the battle, Mr. Jaber said they would make a new push Saturday night.
“We are happy about it,” said one man who identified himself only as Mehmet, watching as his friends slapped down cards. “God willing, Tel Abyad will be like that in 48 hours,” he added, referring to the town across the border from Akcakale. “We trust in the Turkish Army, and we believe in them.” Syrian refugees from Tel Abyad watched the fighting from a hilltop across the border on Saturday afternoon.
Other people in Akcakale said that scores of Turkish-backed Syrian fighters had moved through the town with heavy weaponry to bolster the offensive against Tel Abyad on Friday. They said that they expected a renewed push to take the town after the incursion into Ras al-Ain. “We are in very good shape,” one of them, Abdullah al-Ibrahim, 33, said. A former Arab fighter, he said he was a refugee from Tel Abyad and had not seen his house in five years.
Kurdish-led militias also fired several mortars into Akcakale midmorning, but fell quiet as Turkish artillery pounded their positions in Tel Abyad steadily into the early afternoon. “According to our plans, in one week we will take the whole area that we need,” he said.
Some residents of Turkey have moved away from the border to escape retaliatory fire from Kurdish mortars. The Turkish town of Ceylanpinar, which lies across the border from Ras al-Ain, was evacuated on Friday after at least two civilians were killed there by Kurdish mortar fire. At least 15 civilians have died in other Turkish towns. “Today is the best day of my life,” his friend, Hamad al Idham, said.
Over all, at least 14 civilians in Kurdish-run towns have died and 60 other injured since Wednesday, according to the Kurdish Red Crescent. Some residents of Turkey have fled the border to escape mortar fire from Syria that has killed at least 17 people.
More than 50 Kurdish and 40 Turkish-led fighters have also been killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitor based in Britain. More than 50 Kurdish and 40 rebel fighters have been killed in fighting inside Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitor based in Britain.
Carlotta Gall reported from Akcakale, and Patrick Kingsley from Istanbul. Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington; Ben Hubbard from Dohuk, Iraq; Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon; and Karam Shoumali from Berlin. Ben Hubbard reported from Dohuk, Iraq; Karam Shoumali from Berlin; Carlotta Gall from Akcakale, Turkey; and Patrick Kingsley from Istanbul. Reporting was contributed by Eric Schmitt from Washington; Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon; and Karam Shoumali from Berlin.