“The fight against the YPG/PKK is already very close to victory. Air and ground strikes continue to take Manbij out of the hands of the YPG/PKK,” Reuters quoted its Turkish source as saying on Sunday.
Turkey tried to expel the Kurdish militia from Manbij already at the end of the last decade, but then the YPG/SDF fighters who attacked the capital of the Islamic State, Raqqa, came to the city’s aid.
Fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Syria, refugee camps are bursting at the seams
Near and Middle East
Refugee camps in Kurdish-controlled territory are now overcrowded with refugees sleeping in cars or lying in the streets, even when it’s below zero.
Turkey has been trying to push the Kurds away from its border for a long time, because it considers the YPG a terrorist group supporting the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party, which seeks at least the autonomy of the Turkish Kurds in Turkey.
The Kurds, on the other hand, have taken control of the city of Dayr az-Zaur in recent days, from which the regular Syrian army withdrew.
