Region

WASHINGTON — The United States on Tuesday warned Turkey against launching a new military operation in northern Syria, saying the uneasy NATO ally would be putting US troops at risk.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that Turkey would soon launch a new military operation into northern Syria to create a 30-kilometer "security zone" along the border.

"We are deeply concerned about reports and discussions of potential increased military activity in northern Syria and, in particular, its impact on the civilian population," State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

"We condemn any escalation. We support maintenance of the current cease-fire lines," he said.

At the United Nations, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that the priority for war-battered Syria should be a political solution and humanitarian assistance.

"We stand for the territorial integrity of Syria, and what Syria needs is not more military operations from any quarter," Dujarric told reporters.

Turkey has launched three offensives into Syria since 2016 aimed at crushing Syrian Kurdish fighters who assisted the US-led campaign against the Daesh terror group.

The so-called People’s Protection Units (YPG) are considered “terrorists” by Turkey, which sees them as part of the banned PKK separatist movement at home.

Turkey ordered the last incursion in October 2019 when then US president Donald Trump, following talks with Erdogan, said that US troops had accomplished their mission in Syria and would withdraw.

Amid a backlash even from some of Trump’s allies, then US vice president Mike Pence flew to Turkey and reached an agreement with Erdogan that called for a pause in fighting.

“We expect Turkey to live up to the October 2019 joint statement, including to halt offensive operations in northeast Syria,” Price said.

“We recognise Turkey’s legitimate security concerns on Turkey’s southern border. But any new offensive would further undermine regional stability and put at risk US forces in the coalition’s campaign against ISIS [Daesh],” Price said.

Erdogan’s talk of an offensive comes as he threatens to block the NATO membership of Finland and Sweden, which have sought to join the Western alliance out of alarm at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Erdogan has alleged support for the PKK in the two Nordic states, which are planning high-level talks with Turkey to ease its concerns.

After Trump’s abrupt pullout decision in 2019, the YPG sought protection from Syrian President Bashar Assad and Russia.

Russia and Turkey then negotiated a ceasefire which has mostly held.

Trump soon reversed course on the withdrawal and has some 900 US troops still officially in Syria as part of the fight against Daesh movement.

President Joe Biden has shown no eagerness to pull out the troops despite his exit from the 20-year war in Afghanistan last year.

ISTANBUL — Three Turkish soldiers serving in northern Iraq as part of operations against Kurdish militants were killed on Tuesday, the defence ministry announced.

Another four soldiers were wounded during fighting, said the ministry statement, which did not say where the clash took place.

Turkey's official news agency Anadolu said the Turkish soldiers had clashed with fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Ankara and its western allies say is a terrorist organisation.

The PKK has training camps and bases in autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan and has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, a conflict that has killed 40,000 people, many of them civilians.

Ankara has launched a series of operations against PKK fighters in Iraq and Syria, the latest one in northern Iraq beginning in April.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that Turkey would soon launch a new military operation into northern Syria which he said was designed to create a 30-kilometre "security zone" along their border.

Since 2016, Turkey has also launched three offensives into northern Syria against the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian-Kurdish group it considers to be part of the PKK.

Turkey wants to use these security zones to keep Kurdish militants at a safe distance, and to house some of the 3.7 million Syrian refugees currently sheltering inside its own borders.

SANLIURFA, Turkey — Samira hears the same message from Turkish politicians on the television day and night: Syrian refugees like her must return home. But her home near Damascus is still not safe, she says.

The 44-year-old from Ghouta is one of the hundreds of thousands of refugees in Turkey's Sanliurfa province, which shares a long border with Syria.

Civil war in Samira's homeland is estimated to have killed nearly half a million people and displaced millions since it began with a brutal crackdown of anti-government protests in 2011.

Turkey has fervently opposed Syrian President Bashar Assad, backing rebels calling for his removal and opening its doors to refugees.

But a new wave of economic turbulence, which has seen inflation spike and the value of the lira drop, has put Turkey's 3.7 million Syrian population under enormous strain.

Samira said she has never felt so much pressure since she fled to Turkey in 2019.

"I don't think about going back, they destroyed our house. The situation is bad over there," she told AFP from her modest ground floor flat in the city of Sanliurfa, which is home to around half a million Syrian refugees — a quarter of the province's population.

Refugees fear they will be used as a scapegoat for Turkey's problems in the 2023 electoral campaign, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces rising public anger over their presence.

'Very scared'

The main opposition, the Republican People's Party, has promised to send them back to Syria, while the leader of the far-right Victory Party has admitted funding a viral social media video aimed at scaring Turks about a "silent invasion" of migrants.

Earlier this month, Erdogan said Ankara was aiming to encourage a million Syrian refugees to return to "safe zones" on the Turkey-Syria border by building them housing and local infrastructure.

"'Send Syrians back, send Syrians back!' This is what we hear on television from morning to evening," said Samira, sitting on a cushion on the floor and unwilling to give her full name.

"Why don't they like us? We try to build a life here, we try to stand on our own feet. Politicians use us as an election campaign material," she said.

Despite pressure from opposition parties, Erdogan has pledged that Turkey will not force Syrian refugees back and "will not throw them into the lap of murderers".

But his assurances are not allaying their fears.

A few metres from Samira's house, 43-year-old Umm Mohamed, who runs a grocery store selling Syrian bread, fava and olives, cannot understand the turn of the tide in society.

"We are very scared,” she said, standing behind the counter, her eyes looking timid beneath a black veil.

"We feel the pressure. As a foreigner, we have to be polite all the time."

Syria not an option 

Mohamed's husband defected from Assad's army. "We can't go back," she said. "They would kill us."

Fatima Ibrahim, in her early 30s, married a Syrian refugee after fleeing to Turkey nine years ago. The economic fallout is hitting them just as hard as the Turks, she said.

Her husband lost his job as a blacksmith during the COVID pandemic. Two weeks ago he found a job as a farmer in central Konya province — 700 kilometres from Sanliurfa.

"Employers pay us less, so locals are annoyed, blaming us for accepting a wage less than theirs," she said, sitting next to her three young sons.

"Sometimes we hear from the locals that we should go back, that we have caused them to lose their jobs" she said.

"Some people tell us, 'Syria is better now, why don't you go back? Everything gets so expensive because of you.' That makes me feel so bad."

But returning to Syria is not a possibility for Ibrahim.

"I will never go back. I will either stay here or flee to Europe. There's no third option," she said.

'Don't mingle' 

Ibrahim said she maintains a low profile in public to avoid trouble, keeping contact with locals to a minimum.

"I don't visit my neighbours, and they don't visit my home. We don't mingle," she said.

Haifa, a 39-year-old English teacher from Aleppo, has fluent Turkish after nine years here, and avoids speaking Arabic in public so as not to attract attention.

"I want to keep myself safe," she told AFP, after she was exposed to verbal assaults on the street.

"Political issues affect us more than the economy," she said.

Since 2016, the Turkish army has launched military operations in Syria, battling outlawed Kurdish militants and Daesh.

Haifa said: "Some people tell us 'go back to your country, you're having fun while our soldiers are dying there.'”

"You think it is easy to leave everything behind you? Your memories, your house, everything. You cannot even visit your mother or father's grave."

CAIRO — An Egyptian court on Monday sentenced a businessman to three years in prison for trafficking and sexually assaulting seven underage girls at an orphanage he founded, judicial sources told AFP.

Media and real estate tycoon Mohamed Al Amin was arrested in January on accusations that he had sexually assaulted the young girls at an orphanage in Beni Suef, about 100 kilometres south of Cairo.

Amin, who owned the popular CBC television network before it was sold in 2018, faced up to 25 years in prison.

The three-year prison sentence can be appealed, a judicial source told AFP.

The case had come to public attention after a Facebook page accused Amin of sexually assaulting young girls.

In addition to witnesses who “confirmed the testimonies of the victims”, images were found on the businessman’s phone during the investigation and recordings were produced of the victims recounting the assault, judicial sources said.

The prosecution said the victims accused Amin of regularly assaulting them “without their consent”.

“He abused his power against the orphan girls, whom he sexually assaulted and threatened to expel [from the orphanage] if they reported him,” it said.

Three years is the lightest penalty provided by Egyptian law, which lays out a maximum 15-year sentence for sexual assault.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel's occupation forces said Monday that if an Israeli soldier fired the bullet that killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, it did not appear that the soldier was guilty of criminal misconduct.

"Given that Ms Abu Akleh was killed in the midst of an active combat zone, there can be no immediate suspicion of criminal activity absent further evidence," occupation forces said in a statement citing Military Advocate Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi.

Tomer-Yerushalmi will ultimately be responsible for determining whether any individual soldier faces disciplinary action over the fatal May 11 shooting during clashes in the occupied West Bank flashpoint of Jenin.

She stressed that Israel does not yet know whether Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American, was killed by stray Palestinian gunfire or by an Israeli bullet aimed at a Palestinian fighter.

The [occupation] army "is taking every effort to examine the circumstances of the incident in order to understand how Ms Abu Akleh was killed", the statement said.

Qatar-based Al Jazeera has accused Israel of killing Abu Akleh "deliberately" and "in cold blood".

Tomer-Yerushalmi restated Israel's request to examine the bullet extracted from the body of the reporter. The projectile is in the Palestinian Authority's custody. 

"The inability to inspect the bullet, which is being held by the Palestinian Authority, continues to cast doubt on the circumstances of Ms Abu Akleh's death," the statement said. 

The occupation army has said it had zeroed in on one incident where an Israeli soldier using "a telescopic scope" fired at a "Palestinian gunman".

That gunman "was near" to Abu Akleh, the army has said, adding that it wants to compare the bullet with the weapon fired in this incident. 

Israel has offered to conduct the ballistic examination with Palestinian and American experts present. 

The Palestinian Authority has rejected holding a joint probe with Israel, saying Israel was "completely responsible" for Abu Akleh's death.

The Palestinian foreign ministry said Monday it has submitted a report to the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the "execution" of Abu Akleh.

The ministry, in a statement, "called on the ICC to adopt this report in order to expedite its investigations and bring criminals and murderers to international justice".

KIRKUK, Iraq — Three teenagers and three policemen were shot dead in northern Iraq on Monday as they put out a crop fire, an attack that officials blamed on the Daesh terror group.

The six were gunned down in the Taza Khurmatu district south of the city of Kirkuk, said Hussein Adel, the local adminstration head, adding that a seventh person, a civilian, was also missing.

After the killings, a police car arriving in the area came under fire, and a bomb was also exploded. 

"Daesh set fire to farmland," Adel said. "When police and civilians came to put out the fire, they were attacked by Daesh elements, who killed three policemen and three teenagers."

Iraq announced victory against Daesh in late 2017 after three years of ferocious fighting backed by paramilitary forces and the US-led air coalition. 

But Daesh cells still carry out hit-and-run attacks, particularly in vast desert regions of northern and western Iraq near the porous border with Syria. 

In recent years, they have torched swathes of fields in Iraq and Syria, boasting about the destruction in their propaganda. 

In 2019, more than 200 fires burned down some 5,000 hectares of crops in northern Iraq, with some of the blazes blamed on extremists, and others on land disputes.

After three years of biting drought that has slashed cultivatable areas by half, Iraq is closely monitoring its wheat harvest this year.

The Daesh group has “maintained the ability to launch attacks at a steady rate in Iraq, including hit-and-run operations, ambushes and roadside bombs”, a UN report said in January.

“Exploiting the porous border” between Iraq and Syria, the extremist group still has “between 6,000 and 10,000 fighters across both countries, where it is forming cells and training operatives to launch attacks”.

Cells “remain active in desert and rural territories, and the group uses urban areas to expand its clandestine networks”, it added.

In April, two soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber during a counter-terrorism operation in an area north of the capital Baghdad.