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On January 20, at least eight people were wounded when a salvo of rockets hit a base of the Turkish military and a nearby police center of its proxies in the outskirts of the Turkish-occupied town of Azaz in the northern countryside of Syria’s Aleppo.
The rockets were reportedly launched from a strip of land in the northern Aleppo countryside that is jointly held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Syrian government forces.
According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, six of the wounded are militants working for the local Turkish-backed police force.
The attack may have been carried out by the SDF or one of its affiliates, like the Afrin Liberation Forces, in response to recent Turkish drone strikes on northern and eastern Syria.
On January 18, a fighter of the SDF was reportedly killed after a Turkish drone struck his vehicle on al-Malikiyah-al-Qamishli road in the northern al-Hasakah countryside. The next day, January 19, a second drone strike hit a position of the group near the town of Rmelan in the northeastern countryside of al-Hasakah.
The Turkish military and the SDF have been exchanging blows in northern and eastern Syria for a few weeks now. Both sides sustained casualties.
Ankara, who is currently engaged in Russian-sponsored talks with Damascus, renewed threats of a new ground operation in Syria earlier this month. The SDF is taking these threats seriously. In a recent interview, the group’s Commander-in-Chief Mazloum Abdi said that he expects a Turkish attack in February.
