ANKARA: Eleven Turkish soldiers were killed on Saturday, including twomilitary personnel when a helicopter was downed, in the bloodiest day inAnkara’s offensive against a Kurdish militia in northern Syria.
On January 20, Turkey launched a military operation against the KurdishPeople’s Protection Units (YPG) militia in the Afrin region, backing Syrianrebels with air strikes and ground troops.
“At this stage, we can say that one out of two helicopters was downed. Wehave two martyrs,” Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said in televised remarks.
The Turkish military later said nine more soldiers were killed in separateincidents but did not give details.
Another 11 soldiers were injured after the offensive’s bloodiest day forTurkish military personnel, the army said.
Yildirim said the helicopter was on a mission in the Afrin region as partof Ankara’s offensive dubbed Operation “Olive Branch”.
Ankara says the YPG is a “terrorist” offshoot of the outlawed KurdistanWorkers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency insideTurkey and is blacklisted by Washington and the European Union.
Mustefa Bali, spokesman for the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forcesdominated by the YPG, said on Twitter that a helicopter had been hit in theRajo area of northwest Afrin, near the Turkish border.
But the state-run news agency Anadolu said the incident happened in thesouthern border province of Hatay, with the private Dogan news agencysaying authorities were trying to reach the wreckage in the Kirikhandistrict.
Earlier, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a helicopter had been shotdown without saying who was responsible.
“Of course, these kinds of things will happen. We are in a war. We willhave losses, but we will cause the other side to have losses as well,” hesaid in a televised speech, vowing to make the perpetrators pay “a muchheavier price”.
– ‘Threat to Turkey’ –
The Turkish military said one of its helicopters crashed at 1300 (1000 GMT)killing two military personnel but did not give a reason for the incident,only saying that an investigation had been launched.
Last Saturday, seven Turkish troops died in the second worst single-dayloss of the operation so far, with five killed in a tank attack.
Some 1,141 “terrorists” had been neutralised during the operation, Erdogansaid, referring to those killed but also those captured or wounded.
It was not immediately possible to verify this figure.
Yildirim earlier said Turkey had not launched its operation in Afrin toenter into a war or because it had “an eye” on another country’s territory.
“Excuse me but no state would ignore a terror organisation growing like atumour next to it,” he said.
“This is a threat to Turkey which Ankara has the natural right to fightunder international and domestic law,” Yildirim added. – APP/AFP