Turkey-backed fighters celebrate around a statue of Kawa, a mythology figure in Kurdish culture, after they have destroyed it in the city centre of Afrin, northwestern Syria
SYRIAN Kurdish official Othman Sheikh Issa declared today that the war with Ankara has entered “a new phase” of guerilla warfare after Turkish troops and allied forces steamrollered their way into Afrin city.
Tens of thousands of residents fled the advancing Turkish troops and allied Syrian fighters backed by intense air strikes.
Some pockets of resistance remain in the town, but the YPG Kurdish militia has largely withdrawn its forces.
Mr Issa said that the war against “the Turkish occupation” will change from a direct confrontation to guerilla warfare, “hit and run tactics,” until Afrin’s liberation.
“Our troops will turn into a continuous nightmare for them,” he warned.
Turkey’s military rejected YPG allegations that it bombed a hospital in Afrin, tweeting aerial footage and photographs of the town’s general hospital from Saturday morning, showing it as intact.
YPG official Redur Khalil and the Coventry-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had reported an air strike on the hospital on Friday, claiming 16 people were killed there, including two pregnant women.
The military accused the YPG of trying to create a “negative perception” of its forces.
Syrian Kurds have been dismayed by their US allies’ failure to influence Ankara against invading Afrin, with YPG spokeswoman Lailawa Abdullah declaring that the military campaign against Isis in Deir Ezzor province has been halted because Kurdish fighters have redeployed to Afrin.
Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was pictured on state TV today visiting his victorious troops in eastern Ghouta, following the capture of Kafr Batna and Saqba, which gives government forces control of about 80 per cent of the former opposition stronghold.
Russian military spokesman Major General Vladimir Zolotukhin said that a further 25,000 people had left eastern Ghouta in one day through a safe channel in the town of Hamouria.
Maj Gen Zolotukhin, who works with the Russian centre for reconciling Syria’s warring parties, said that it is distributing bedding and food to those arriving in government-held areas.
The Jaysh al-Islam jihadist group claimed last night to have knocked out up to a dozen army tanks in ongoing resistance in the eastern Ghouta town of Ar-Rayhan.
