Turkey Begins Ground Assault on Kurdish Enclave in Syria<br />21, 2018<br />ISTANBUL — Turkish troops crossed the Syrian border into the Kurdish enclave of Afrin on Sunday morning, beginning a ground assault against American-allied<br />militias there, as the first accounts of casualties emerged amid rising international criticism of Turkey’s military action.<br />Mr. Yildirim said Turkish forces would seek to destroy any logistics supply routes to Kurdish units,<br />but Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said United States officials had assured Turkey there were no American troops in the region.<br />At the same time, hundreds of Kurdish fighters from the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which has been leading the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, were assembling in towns to the east<br />and south of Afrin, according to The Associated Press.<br />Ten people were reported killed in the bombing raids, according to Kurdish militants,<br />and three people died on the Turkish side of the border in retaliatory shelling, local people said.<br />Syrian fighters allied with Turkish forces claimed to have seized control of Shankal, a village<br />on the northwestern edge of the Afrin district, but Kurdish fighters rejected the claim.
