Turkish regime forces shelled Syrian army and allied forces positions near the northern city of Manbij leaving a number of martyrs and wounded, a Syrian military source told the Military Media Center on Thursday.
“The Turkish aggression on Syrian territory is an attempt to stop the successes and advances that the Syrian army is achieving in its war against terrorist groups and their affiliates,” the source said.
State-run SANA news agency quoted a military source as saying that the Turkish bombardment targeted Syrian border guard positions in the countryside near the northern city of Manbij.
Turkey intervened in northern Syria in August in support of terrorist groups with the goal of preventing Kurdish groups from building an autonomous zone along the frontier.
In spite of some differences in the past between the Syrian Army and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a new understanding between them has been established in the face of a common Turkish threat, Fars News reported.
The Syrian Army has deployed its forces in some villages, such as Jubb al Hamra and Al Wahijih, which were previously controlled by the Kurdish fighters of the Manbij Military Council, in order to maintain security in the regions to the West of Manbij after a recent Russian-brokered agreement between the SDF and Damascus.
Kurdish forces are expected to hand more villages to the Syrian Army West of Manbij in the next days.
On Wednesday, the Turkish Army and its allies of Ahrar al-Sham, Failaq al Sham and several predominately Turkmen brigades of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) launched an assault against Syrian and Kurdish troops in the countryside between Al Bab and Manbij in an attempt to expel them from some villages of this region.
In a similar development on Thursday, engineers restored two water pumping stations that feed water to the country’s largest city, Aleppo, in territory captured by the Syrian government from ISIL militants this week, state media reported.
Water should reach the city within 24 hours of starting the pumps, said Ahmad Shami, who used to work for the city’s public water utility.
Syrian forces and their allies Thursday entered Jarrah airbase, 16 kilometers south of Al-Khafsa, for the first time since 2014, the Observatory said.
ISIL commandeered several MiG warplanes when they captured the Al-Jarrah air base in 2014. Days later, Syrian warplanes bombed the aircraft on the runway.
Source: Hezbollah War Media Center
