Turkish and Russian troops launch first joint ground patrols in fight to push back Kurdish militia forces in Syria as car bomb kills 13 people

Turkish and Russian troops in armoured vehicles held their first joint ground patrols in northeast Syria on Friday – and a deadly car bomb in a northern town took the lives of 13 people, it emerged today.     

Turkey and allied Syrian rebels launched a cross-border offensive against the Kurdish YPG militia on October 9, seizing control of 75 miles of land along the frontier.

Ankara and Moscow last week agreed to remove the militia fighters to a depth of at least 19 miles south of the border – and Russia told Turkey that the YPG left the strip. 

On Friday, Turkish and Russian troops in armoured vehicles held their first joint ground patrols in northeast Syria under a deal between the two countries that was said to have forced the YPG away from territory near Turkey’s border. 

Today it was revealed that a car bomb that detonated in the Syrian town of Tel Abyad, near Turkey’s border, killed at least 13 people and injured more than 30, according to Turkish state media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Tel Abyad is one of two major border towns that were the initial focus of Turkey’s cross-border assault in recent weeks to capture territory from Kurdish militia in northern Syria.

Turkey’s government blamed the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia and the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) for the ‘inhuman attack’. The Observatory said pro-Turkey fighters and civilians were among the dead and injured in the car explosion.

Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu Agency said 13 were killed after a ‘bomb-laden vehicle’ exploded in a marketplace in the centre of Tel Abyad.

The town is where some of the heaviest fighting has taken place since the Turkish military launched its incursion last month in northeast Syria against the YPG, which for years was allied to the United States in the fight against Islamic State.

‘We condemn this inhuman attack of the bloody PKK/YPG terrorists who attacked the innocent civilians of Tel Abyad who returned to their homes and lands as a result of the Operation Peace Spring,’ Turkey’s defence ministry said on Twitter.

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), based in Turkey, is designated a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies. Ankara considers the YPG a terrorist group because of its ties to PKK Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey.

On Friday Turkish armoured vehicles drove across the border to join their Russian counterparts, according to television footage filmed from the Turkish side of the border. Around four hours later, they returned to Turkey.

Ground and air units were involved in the patrol around the Syrian border town of Darbasiya, the Turkish Defence Ministry said on Twitter, showing photos of soldiers studying a map and of four armoured vehicles.

On Wednesday, President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey had information that the YPG, which Ankara sees as a terrorist group because of its ties to Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey, had not completed its pullout.

Russia is the Syrian government’s most powerful ally and helped it turn the tables in the country’s civil war by retaking much of the country from rebels since 2015. 

The Turkish-Russian deal last week allowed Syrian government forces to move back into border regions from which they had been absent for years.

Ankara launched its offensive against the YPG following President Donald Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of 1,000 U.S. troops from northern Syria in early October. The YPG helped the United States smash the Islamic State ‘caliphate’ in Syria.

Four Russian vehicles and a drone also took part in Friday’s patrol, conducted in an area between 40 km east of Ras al Ain and 30 km west of Qamishli, a Turkish security source said.

The source said patrols would extend further along the border strip and drones would be used to ensure YPG fighters had left the area.

The source added that there had been no direct clashes with Syrian government forces during the incursion.

Overnight, the defence ministry said Turkey had handed over to the Russians 18 Syrian government soldiers detained in Syria near the Turkish border this week.

The 18 men were seized on Tuesday during operations southeast of the Syrian town of Ras al Ain, part of an area where Turkey’s incursion took place, stretching some 75 miles along the border to the town of Tel Abyad.

Erdogan said on Thursday that Turkey planned to establish a ‘refugee town or towns’ in a ‘safe zone’ between Tel Abyad and Ras al Ain, part of a project which state media have said would cost 151 billion lira ($26 billion).

He met U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday and had said he would ask him to call for a donors’ meeting to help finance Ankara’s plans to resettle Syrian refugees in the region.

‘I will say: ”You make a call for an international donors’ meeting. If you don’t, I will make this call”,’ Erdogan said on Thursday.

‘If it doesn’t happen, we will establish a refugee town or towns between Tel Abyad and Ras al Ain,’ he said, addressing a building contractor in the hall and saying he would ask him to play a role in the project.

Ankara has said it plans to resettle in Syria up to 2 million of the 3.6 million Syrian war refugees that it hosts.

Erdogan and Guterres discussed Turkey’s plan, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters in New York on Friday.

‘The Secretary-General stressed the basic principles relating to the voluntary, safe and dignified return of refugees. He informed the president that UNHCR (the U.N. Refugee Agency) will immediately form a team to study the proposal and engage in discussions with Turkish authorities,’ Haq said.

According to plans Erdogan presented at the United Nations General Assembly in September, Turkey would resettle some 405,000 people between Tel Abyad and Ras al Ain.

Erdogan said leaders at the General Assembly had looked positively on the plans but declined to offer money.

‘We have for years hosted millions of refugees in our lands. The support we have received from the international community has unfortunately just been advice,’ he said.

‘The mentality that regards a drop of oil as more valuable than a drop of blood does not see anything but its own interest in Syria and everywhere in the world.’

Last week Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the United States would beef up its military presence in Syria with ‘mechanized forces’ to prevent Islamic State militants seizing oil fields.