On March 19, the Turkish Army and its proxies from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) captured all positions of the Kurdish People’s Protection units (YPG) north and northwest of the city of Afrin, including the center of the Ma’batle district and the Rajo-Afrin highway, according to sources close to the FSA.
Click to see the full-size map
Earlier, the Turkish Army and its proxies captured the strategic city of Afrin after the YPG had withdrawn from it without a fight. Turkish Army soldiers captured loads of ammunition and weapons that had been left behind by the YPG. US-made TOW and Russian-made kornet anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) were among the captured weapons.
Click to see the full-size image
Click to see the full-size image
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that the YPG had lost over 1,500 fighters since the start of the Turkish offensive on January 20. From its side, the Turkish Army acknowledged that 46 of its fighters had been killed in the offensive.
It’s unknown yet if the Turkish Army will continue its offensive towards the remaining positions of the YPG south and southeast of Afrin. Such a move will likely cause further tensions between Turkish forces and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) that have notable forces in these areas.
I hate to say this, but I hope Turkey finishes the job and takes them all out, before moving along the border. I wonder what the Kurds are thinking now, especially without any US air support ?.
Did you noticed what both US and turkey use as foot soldiers? You think is coincidence ?
Turkish Army and its proxies from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) captured all positions of the Kurdish……….
The US-led coalition and Free Syrian Army (FSA) groups operating in the al-Tanaf area, near the Syrian-Iraqi border are preparing to launch a military operation against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA)
Turkish backed FSA has nothing to do with the US ones. Turkish FSA are mostly from the northern parts and are locals to that area. They wont fight SAA. So I suggest you to stop misleading people.
Tfsa=isis
uneducated left-media influenced idiot
Better idiot than turkey sunni shit
Thank you for confirming polake
The US-led coalition or FSA whatever they keep the name they all are terrorists and they will be caught from their asses such as that they will give advice to their comming generations that don’t play with fire.
Grab them by the anus.
No, no, no…assuming you are talking about the FSA, they are different factions and yes, I know it is confusing.
Check this out – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Syrian_Army
This is my view …the Turkish FSA is different from the US FSA – however stupid that sounds.
If I am wrong I apologise, but all these 3 letter acronyms do my head in, so I could well be incorrect.
My head too, you not alone and they keep changing them all the time :-).
It doesn’t sound stupid at all. As far as I can see the FSA these days is just a label and not a unified force.
Are you sure this is a good idea? AMN reports looting by FSA in Afrin city :( https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/turkish-backed-rebels-loot-afrin-city/
Looting is no problem, the people are out. I want Afrin area cleared out and then handed back to Syria.
Does the FSA even exist now? The proxies injected into Afrin by the Turkish army are labeled as FSA by Turkey and wave the FSA’s version of the Syrian flag, but they look and behave like Daesh/”Islamic State.” Note their one-finger salute, “Allah akbar” mantra, long hair, drugged appearance etc.
https://cdni.rt.com/files/2018.03/article/5aaeaa0bfc7e93b6778b4604.jpg
Vladimir Putin decisively re-elected as Russian president – preliminary results Congratulation to Vladimir Putin and to all Russian brothers. This is really a fantastic news. I love the strategies of Vladimir Putin. He is a true genius president in the whole world. He is like a Massiah for the victims of US and Israel. The Russia all enemies will be so sad today.
fckn turds
butthurt ???? cry on bitch !
Coming from jihad subhuman scum like you its a compliment.. Thank you! goatfucker
Ask your mother if I am a subhuman or a goatfucker. She knows it very well retard moron. Better your unknown father had not ejaculate in your mother. Waste of Oxygen.
Dumb fuck. So you are in necrophilia.. woow.. nothing new for jihad scum.. its a goat,boy, or dead corpse.. nice ..
How does it feel getting r4ped in the comment section? btw how rich of you talking about jihad scum, you look like you would fit right in with the HTS squad.
Ohh you came to help your boyfriend.. Yeah your al nusra fuck’s are all intellectuals.. Without beards and stuff..
You must be really sick. No wonder look at your avatar. Go get some pyscho help, keyboard hero
i’m sick and you are bragging about fucking dead people??? Truly washed up jihad brain.. Go and blow yourself at family meeting..
I dont know what is going on in your tiny brain but it must be a sick shit. I am serious, go and get some pyscho help.
I did..
Here’ it is..
http://frontinfo.media/18-fate-of-wahhabies-xv-yemen-iraq-syria/
lololololololo
This is all for the good of Syria. Someone needs to stop kurds from disintegrating. SAA can not do it. Turkey is the best and the only hammer to get the nail in. Some of your guys need to get your heads out of your asses. It would be for Erdogan political suicide to engage SAA, bec 90% of the Turks do not support it and next elections are in 2019. The MOST Turkey might do is to occupy 30-50 km land from the border. That means making the US ally completely dead by accupying all Kurdish majority areas. Dead FSA and dead SDF is all good for SAA. Now SAA just needs to take care of the remaining pockets, strengthen and let SDF ja FSA/Turkey to engage each other. Even if FSA did get some extra edge and some new weapons, SAA is winning the battle on all fronts in central and southern Syria. FSA can not confront them once SAA has cleared off all the pockets in south. FSA does not have air power, SAA has that and support from Iran, Russia, Iraq and Lebanon. The worst possible scenario with Turkey fighting SDF is better, than the best possible scenario of SDF left alone. If they are left alone, either Syria will be partitioned from north and east of Eufrat river, or SDF will be strengthened and they will take Assad out by American support.
It was good tactic in beginning of the war to fight FSA and leave the kurds alone to focus your forces foe the greatest threat. But now once the battle has been won, someone needs to put Pandora, or the snake back into the box. Turkey is the only possible force to do that job. If Kurds are left to have their own country in the middle east, that means displacements of tens of millions of people (even in northern Syria, Kurds are just 55% of people, means need to displace at least 2 million people in Syria alone), major civil wars in middle-east in Turkey, Iraq and Iran, eventually pretext for US to attack and break Iran to chop off Kurdish and oil rich areas off from Iran and forced regime change.
The Kurds do not have that much power, just look at Afrin. Even idea of Rojava was cut off at Al Bab; because Turkey, Syria, and Russia was against it. BTW: Syrian country does not want to be invaded by Turks and their FSA trash. AMN now has reports that FSA is looting Afrin city. https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/turkish-backed-rebels-loot-afrin-city/
Kurds do not have much strength, but they control almost third of land area and most oil fields. As long, as kurds have US army and USAF protecting them there is no way how Syrian army can actively fight Kurds no matter how weak they are. Independent kurdish state is much more dangerous for the region, Russia and Syria, than Turks and FSA attacking their area to fight the kurds.
well we didnt have any displacements so far from the lands in SYria that are controlled by ypg. Furthermore in Iraq the Kurds leave together with iraqis for decades and even in the post -saddam era they have their autonomy…..
A independent Kurdistan would leave an area where the US/Israel proxies can breed and infect. The Kurds can’t be trusted anymore than we(US) can be.
When it comes to the casualty statistics can we all admit that it all depends on both how you count and who you believe. In the case South Front might as well not post them since the long and heavy battle cost the Turks way more than they’ll admit, although I wouldn’t go by Kurdish estimates either.
The battle would cost them. But Turks would rather have even quite heavy casualties, than have 30.000 U.S. trained PKK army at their border. Even 10.000 dead and 50 billion cost would probably be quite ok for them. Because the latter would cost them much more.
I completely agree with your first sentence. But please consider this, Turkey is a country with a population of 80 million. The soldiers of TAF (Turkish Armed Forces) have families all around the country. These soldiers have cell phones and social media accounts, so does their families. Although freedom of press is a fragile thing in Turkey, it would be almost impossible to hide news about a dead soldier. Let me rephrase it; it would be as difficult to hide a dead US soldier from the world media. The most that could happen is delay the news a couple of days. However the FSA troop losses, losses in military hardware would not share the same accuracy. On the other hand the “terrorists naturalized” number would certainly come down to “how you count and who you believe”
Turkey does not have US syndrome for dead soldiers (Vietnam). Turkey can withstand some level of dead military. It is so far less, than 100. But even 2000 KIA soldiers is not a problem for Turkey political leadership as long, as it is against PKK. If it was against Syrian army, it would be completely different.
An increase of the proportion in causalities as you describe would most probably further strengthen the support of the military action inside the country. The sad fact is Turkey has been loosing people (police, army and civilians) to PKK for as long as most of its population can remember. As you said as long as it is against PKK or YPG or whatever acronym they are given, Turkish leadership can comfortably tolerate loss of people and money. Any country that would support, defend and/or supply the same groups would fall in to the same category. And suddenly we have arrived at one major source of tension between US, NATO, EU and Turkey.
This is true, but the numbers are still probably low. Governments always give much lower numbers. Plus 70 TAF soldiers really could have died but they claimed it was 46. Unless the families of all 70 soldiers come out then we will never know. Each family assumes that their loved one is one of the 46 killed. Both sides are lying about their cas rates. I go roughly off of what the SOHR says, because its the closest thing we have to a neutral source. Even then, I assume their numbers are not absolutely correct. I sue them as a gauge.
Well… I have to disagree. Let me elaborate. Turkish mainstream media,for more than 20 years, has always made the death of each Turkish soldier news. When a sold ier dies, his name, his rank and picture is front page news, the funereal is attended by military and public officials (most often than not at the cabinet level) and the family and the funereal is almost always televised. The last two months also has seen the streaming of their last wills or/and last social media communications (on mainstream Turkish media and newspapers) with friends or family. As I mentioned before the most that could happen is delay the news a couple of days.
As I mentioned before, this level of attention is only relevant for the soldiers of TAF (Turkish Armed Forces).
I would have to agree to your point on SOHR being the closest thing we have to a neutral source. However one should keep in mind that, since for a long time US-backed YPG (add the other fitting acronyms here) was fighting ISIS, the information SOHR uses (in this particular area) had to come from pro-kurdish sources. The military operation by Turkey and Turkish backed militia creates a 3rd side to the conflict (again in this particular part of Syria) and it is extremely difficult to talk about neutrality.
Now, there are some SAA units encircled by TAF/TFSA they should be saved/rescued.
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they left in such a hurry that they left such precious weapons behind…..its obvious they luck strategy, politics everything……they are just good at hit and run guerilla tactics…..nothing more…..they luck political guidance that would ensure their survival and their own country.now they are just pawns in a bigger game. they arent trained to fight by US (as every other fraction has) they dont plan their moves ….they are totally written of i think….
Only 47 dead turkish soldiers lol. Anyway, what happened to ndf stationed there and where do notable pyd politicians reside now after being expelled from there? Even better, where were they all along??
Reportedly the NDF militia entered Afrin canton but did not enter Afrin city.
Its probably a higher count than that, but it does like the proxy soldiers did more of the combat in general than actual TAF soldiers. Im guessing the actual number of TAF KIA is no higher than 100, but lower than that. Keep in mind that that number isnt counting wounded or MIA or any of the FSA casualties. Total casualties for TAF and FSA are over 1,000. Same for Kurds. This was actually a pretty bloody campaign, even by WW2 standards. Two months of fighting and over 2,000 total casualties, in a smallish region. That’s tough fighting for both sides.