Turkish Armed Forces backed by armored vehicles, special forces and infantry regiments advanced 5 kilometers (3 miles) inside Afrin as part of Operation Olive Branch.<\/p>\n
During the movement, no major clashes took place.<\/p>\n
Turkish warplanes and artillery have hit 153 PYD\/PKK and Daesh targets in Syria’s Afrin, so far, the Turkish General Staff said earlier on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“Operation Olive Branch continues as planned and the ground offensive has begun” the military said in a statement on the second day of the military operation.<\/p>\n
The military also said only terrorist targets and their positions, shelters, were being destroyed and “utmost importance” was being given to not harm any civilian.<\/p>\n
The operation — aimed at eliminating PYD\/PKK and Daesh elements from Syria’s Afrin — was launched at 5 p.m. (GMT1400) on Saturday. It was being carried out under the framework of Turkey\u2019s rights based on international law, UN Security Council\u2019s decisions, self-defense rights under the UN charter and respect to Syria’s territorial integrity, the military added.<\/p>\n
Afrin has been a major hideout for the PYD\/PKK since July 2012 when the Assad regime in Syria left the city to the terror group without putting up a fight.<\/p>\n
The Turkish cities of Kilis and Hatay across the Syrian border are within the firing range of the PYD\/PKK group from Afrin, which sits atop a hill. The terror group has also used Amanos Mountains to penetrate from Syria into Turkey.<\/p>\n
The PYD\/PKK depends on Afrin to connect to the Mediterranean from northwestern Syria. The terrorist organization has also threatened the gains made from Operations Euphrates Shield and Idlib de-escalation zone over Afrin. A quarter of Syria land and 65 percent of Turkey-Syria border are currently under occupation of the terrorist organization.<\/p>\n
Operation Euphrates Shield began in August 2016 and ended in late March 2017 to improve security, support coalition forces and eliminate the terror threat along the Turkish border.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Turkish ground forces have started to move into Syria\u2019s Afrin with Free Syrian Army.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":59874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,118],"tags":[77861,29088,3219],"class_list":["post-59872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-hot","tag-afrin","tag-free-syrian-army","tag-pkk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}