Syrian Kurds battle Daesh for town at Turkish border

SANLIURFA, Turkey/BEIRUT — Kurdish-led militia backed by US-led air strikes fought Daesh militants near a Syrian town at the Turkish border on Sunday, a monitoring group and a Kurdish official said, in an advance that has worried Turkey.

Concerned about an expansion of Kurdish sway in Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Kurdish groups were taking over areas evacuated by Arabs and Turkmen, saying that might eventually threaten Turkey's borders.

The Kurdish-led YPG, working with the US-led alliance and small Syrian rebel groups, has pushed into Daesh's Syrian stronghold of Raqqa province, threatening one of its supply lines to the militants’ de facto capital, Raqqa city.

While dealing a blow to Daesh, seizing Tel Abyad would also help the YPG to link up Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Syria. Turkey is worried about the risk of separatist sentiment among its own Kurdish minority in the southwest.

At least 13,000 people have fled into Turkey over the past week to escape the fighting near Tel Abyad.

On Sunday, Turkish authorities reopened the border after a few days of closure, a security source said, adding that they expected as many as 10,000 people to come across.

Local media said Daesh militants had tried to prevent refugees from crossing into Turkey.

“[Daesh] doesn’t want people to flee. They are telling them the coalition forces would bomb the town if the civilians left,” the security source said.

Deash militants had forced refugees who fled the fighting back to the town of Tel Abyad late on Saturday, television footage from the scene showed.

YPG fighters were battling Daesh militants on the eastern outskirts of the town on Sunday, YPG spokesman Redur Xeili told Reuters. Coordination with the US-led alliance was “excellent” with air strikes conducted according to need.

“The road connecting Tel Abyad and Raqqa city is in our firing range,” he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the conflict, said there were only around 150 Daesh militants in Tel Abyad.

An activist group, Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, said on its Twitter feed that Daesh had stripped a Tel Abyad hospital of all its equipment and had moved it to Raqqa city. It also said militants were ordering people away from the border area.

Erdogan sees possible border threat

The YPG has emerged as the main partner on the ground in Syria for the US-led alliance that has been bombing Daesh in Syria and Iraq. Its advance into Raqqa province follows a campaign that drove Daesh from wide areas of neighbouring Hasaka province.

Turkey views the YPG as part of the PKK, which has fought a decades-long insurgency against Ankara and is considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

Erdogan, in comments published on Sunday, reiterated his view that Arabs and Turkmen were being targeted by the advance.

Kurdish groups were “being placed into regions that they are evacuating. This is not a good sign. Because it means paving the way for a structure which could threaten our border”, he said.

Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the observatory, said the people who had fled into Turkey were escaping fighting and there was no systematic effort to force people out.

He said also said there were no Turkmen in the area: “There are violations by individuals from the YPG, but not in a systematic way.”