TURKISH forces blitzed Kurdish YPG militia in Syria’s Aleppo province yesterday while mounting a new ground invasion in Idlib to the south.

Starting on Wednesday night, Turkey carried out 26 strikes, as well as artillery barrages, against YPG guerillas in the north-western Afrin canton.

The military later claimed to have killed up to 200 of them.But senior YPG commander Mahmoud Barkhadan said reports from his militia around Tell Rifat and Hassajek suggested just 10 fighters had been killed and 20 wounded.

Syria’s official Sana news agency described the raids as “acts of aggression,” reiterating the government’s denunciation of Turkey’s two-month-old invasion of the north of Aleppo province.

The Kurds continued their westward push towards the Islamic State (Isis) provincial stronghold of al-Bab, which Turkey and its jihadist allies have vowed to capture.

If the YPG takes the town, it will be in a position to link Afrin with recently captured Manbij and its large area of control east of the Euphrates.

If Turkey takes the town, it will prevent the YPG and its parent organisation the Democratic Union Party (PYD) from creating a single Kurdish-controlled area across northern Syria.

Meanwhile, Turkish tanks reportedly rolled across the border into Idlib province, occupied by the al-Qaida-affiliated Levant Conquest Front and its Western-backed allies.

They occupied the village of Aqrabat to build a new border crossing south of the existing one, either to boost supplies to the jihadis or to prepare an attack on Afrin from the south.

The Turkish military claimed the YPG had fired mortar shells into Turkey’s Hatay province, from where the invasion was launched.

In Aleppo, the government opened eight humanitarian corridors so that civilians — and gunmen willing to accept an amnesty — can escape the al-Qaida-occupied east of the city and aid lorries can enter.

But the militants opened fire on the routes in an apparent bid to prevent desertions.

In government-held west Aleppo, rebel shelling killed a girl and injured a woman.Nevertheless, the government and the Russians extended the “humanitarian pause” in bombing for another 24 hours.