Coalition strikes kill up to 150 Daesh terrorists in Syria

WASHINGTON/ANKARA: The US-led coalition has killed as many as 150 Daesh fighters in an operation in the middle Euphrates River Valley in Syria, officials said Tuesday.
According to a coalition statement, the airstrikes took place on Saturday near Al-Shafah, in Deir Ezzor province, on a Daesh headquarters where the terrorists appeared to have been “massing for movement.”
Dozens of combatants have been killed since Turkey launched an offensive in the Kurdish region of Afrin in northwestern Syria on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Wednesday, citing sources on all sides.
The observatory said Turkish shelling and airstrikes in Afrin had killed 28 civilians, while two civilians had been killed near the Syrian opposition-held town of Azaz as a result of shelling by the Kurdish YPG, which is defending Afrin.
Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman said 48 Turkey-backed Syrian fighters with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) had been killed. The death toll among the Kurdish YPG was so far 42, he said.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to expand the operation in northern Syria toward the town of Manbij, which would bring Turkish troops and their Syrian allies closer to US forces supporting the Kurds against Daesh.
As Turkey pushed ahead with its operation, fears grew of an escalation in tension with the US, despite both countries being NATO allies.
But instead, US military officials reacted differently — at least in public statements. They began empathizing with Ankara over its domestic security concerns, most significantly the decades-long insurgency by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is linked with the PYD and YPG.
Pentagon spokesman Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway said that if the YPG in northern Syria moves to Afrin and if the military equipment provided by the US is used for other purposes than fighting Daesh, the group will lose US support.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said the Turkish Army had falsely claimed that Daesh is present in the Afrin region, accusing it of trying to mislead global public opinion.
In a separate development, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said that this week’s round of UN-sponsored talks on Syria is the “last hope” for reaching a political solution to the seven-year war.
“There is no prospect of a political solution today except, and it’s the last hope, the meeting that opens tomorrow in Vienna led by the UN and with all the stakeholders present,” Le Drian told Parliament.
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