Turkey Kills 12 YPG Kurds After Three Soldiers Slain

Soldiers killed in border town IED

On Saturday, Turkey’s Defense Ministry reported 12 members of the Syrian Kurdish YPG were killed in support fire. This was retaliation for three Turkish soldiers who were killed in an IED attack.

The soldiers were killed in Akcakale, along the Syrian border with the town of Tal Abyad. Turkey says the bomb was “put there by terrorists.”

They responded with fire across the border, killing 12. This brings the YPG toll to 20 over 24 hours, as another eight were killed on Friday in a separate attack at the border.

Details on which Kurds they were or what they were doing isn’t clear, as Turkey treats the Kurds as terrorists as a matter of course, and rarely offers insight into what they’re doing to them, beyond killing them.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.