Syria monitor says 10 dead in clashes in north, car bomb kills nine

A Syria war monitor said 10 pro-Turkey fighters were killed on Saturday during fighting with Kurdish-led forces in the country’s north, while nine people were killed in a car bombing.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 10 members of pro-Ankara groups were killed in clashes with the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who launched attacks south and east of the city of Manbij, an area that has experienced weeks of violence.

The Britain-based Observatory also said nine people, including an unspecified number of pro-Turkey fighters, were killed “when a car bomb exploded near a military position” in the city of Manbij, without saying who was behind the blast.

Syria’s White Helmets emergency rescue group said “three civilians were killed and six other civilians wounded,” some seriously, in the Manbij car bomb, adding that the toll was provisional and that the blast damaged nearby shops and buildings.

The SDF said in a statement on Saturday that its fighters had targeted several positions held by pro-Turkish groups in the Manbij area a day earlier.

With US support, the SDF spearheaded the military campaign that ousted the Islamic State jihadist group from its last territory in Syria in 2019.

But Turkey, a key backer of Islamist-led rebels who ousted longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad in December, accuses the main component of the SDF — the People’s Protection Units (YPG) — of being affiliated with the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Both Turkey and the United States have designated the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil, a “terrorist” group.

Turkish-backed forces launched an offensive against the SDF in November during which they have captured several Kurdish-held enclaves in the north despite US efforts to broker a ceasefire.

Syria’s new rulers have called on the SDF to hand over their weapons, rejecting demands for any kind of Kurdish self-rule.