Northern Syrian violence kills 19 civilians: monitor

At least 19 civilians have been killed in two separate incidents in the latest spate of violence along Syria’s northern border with Turkey, a war monitor said on Friday.

The bloodshed comes amid rising tensions pitting the regime-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces against Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies.

Artillery fire by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime on the border town of Al-Bab, which is under the rule of Turkish-controlled Syrian forces, killed 15 civilians in an incident Friday morning, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“Children were among the casualties and at least 40 others were injured,” said the observatory, which has a network of sources in Syria. It added that the shelling came from regime positions.

The monitor had previously named nine dead and around 30 wounded.

A spokesman for the Kurdish-dominated SDF denied any involvement.

The shelling hit a busy town square, where residents and first responders rushed to help and evacuate the wounded.

An AFP correspondent said the strike swept through the market area and described a mess of body parts, strewn vegetables and tattered handcarts.

Violence between Turkey and the Syrian Kurds escalated this week with a deadly Turkish attack that killed 17 regime fighters and Kurdish militants in retaliation for Kurdish fire in Turkey.

On Friday, the semi-autonomous Kurdish administration in northeastern Syria said a night Turkish strike had hit a girls’ rehabilitation center in a region near the city of Hasaka.

The observatory said four children enrolled at the center were killed and 11 injured.

Ankara considers the main Kurdish component of the SDF – which is allied with the United States against Islamic State jihadists – to be a terrorist organization with ties to the Kurdish insurgency within its own territory.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has again threatened a large-scale operation against the Kurds in northern Syria. A July 19 summit with Iran and Russia, the two other major foreign facilitators in the region, failed to get approval for a new offensive against the Kurdish militants.