ANKARA – Turkish ground troops entered Syria on Sunday to push an offensiveagainst Kurdish militia as rocket fire hit a border town in apparentretaliation.

Turkey on Saturday launched operation “Olive Branch” seeking to oust fromthe Afrin region of northern Syria the Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG)which Ankara considers a terror group.

But the campaign risks further increasing tensions with Turkey’s NATO allythe United States — which has supported the YPG in the fight againstIslamic State jihadists — and also needs at least the tacit support ofRussia to succeed.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said troops crossed into the YPG-controlledregion in Syria at 0805 GMT, the Dogan news agency reported.

Turkish artillery and war planes pounded YPG sites around Afrin and totalof 153 targets, including YPG refuges and weapons stores have now been hit,according to the army.

The state-run Anadolu news agency said the Turkish troops, whose number wasnot specified, were advancing alongside forces from the pro-Ankara rebelFree Syrian Army (FSA) and were already five kilometres (three miles)inside Syria.

An AFP correspondent on the southwestern edge of the Afrin region saw awarplane bombing the western outskirts of the area early on Sunday.

A small unit from a Turkish-backed rebel group was manning a monitoringpoint on a hilltop overlooking several Kurdish-controlled villages below.

– ‘No need to worry’ –

The operation is Turkey’s second major incursion into Syria during theseven-year civil war after the August 2016-March 2017 Euphrates Shieldcampaign in an area to the east of Afrin against both the YPG and IS.

The army said IS was also being targeted in this operation although it nolonger has any major presence in the Afrin area.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had repeatedly vowed that Turkey would rootout the “nests of terror” in Syria of the YPG, which Ankara accuses ofbeing the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).