21 Pro-Turkey Fighters Killed In Syria Minefield: Monitor

Twenty-one pro-Turkey fighters were killed in northern Syria on Tuesday when they walked into a minefield laid by Kurdish-led forces, a Britain-based war monitor said

Beirut, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Nov, 2020 ) :Twenty-one pro-Turkey fighters were killed in northern Syria on Tuesday when they walked into a minefield laid by Kurdish-led forces, a Britain-based war monitor said.

Soldiers from neighbouring Turkey and their Syrian proxies last year seized a 120-kilometre (70-mile) stretch of land from Kurdish fighters on the Syrian side of the border.

Since then, pro-Ankara fighters have been stationed to the north of the town of Ain Issa, and sporadic skirmishes have broken out between them and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

Overnight, some 30 Turkey-backed combatants tried to sneak into the nearby SDF-controlled village of Muallaq after sending in drones to bombard it, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday.

But they became ensnared in an SDF minefield, leaving dead 21 pro-Ankara fighters and wounding the rest, the Britain-based monitoring group said.

An SDF spokesman reported that "violent clashes" had taken place in the Ain Issa area during the night.

Turkey and its Syrian proxies control several pockets of territory inside Syria following three military incursions since 2016, against Islamic State group (IS) and Kurdish fighters.

Syria's civil war has killed more than 380,000 people since it started with the repression of anti-government protests in 2011.