Turkish strike kills three in Kurdish-run Syria

The Kurdish administration in northeastern Syria said Wednesday that a Turkish drone strike targeting a car in the border city of Qamishli killed three civilians.

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The strike, which was carried out on Tuesday, “killed three members of a single family”, including an 82-year-old man, a statement released by the autonomous administration said.

Nuri Mahmoud, a spokesman for the Kurdish security forces, named the dead as “national figure Yusuf Kello and his two grandsons Mazloum and Muhammad.”

“The treacherous targeting of the patriots of northeastern Syria by the Turkish occupation will not discourage us,” the spokesman said on Twitter.

Turkey, which considers the Kurdish movement that dominates the administration to be a terrorist organization, has thousands of troops deployed across northern Syria.

The army and its Syrian opposition proxies have seized swathes of territory in successive military operations since 2016, most of them targeting Kurdish forces.

Last month, Erdogan said Turkey was preparing to step up operations in Syria, where its troops have clashed with Kurdish forces supported by the US in the fight against ISIS.

Qamishli residents are expected to hold a protest later on Wednesday against the latest drone strike.

The conflict in Syria has killed nearly 500,000 people since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of peaceful demonstrations.

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