ANKARA: The US and Turkey launched a second round of joint patrols in northeastern Syria on Tuesday as part of plans to create a “safe” buffer zone, the Turkish defense ministry said.
Four Turkish armored vehicles crossed the border to join US forces in Syria, state news agency Anadolu said, for patrols around the town of Tal Abyad.
The ministry said drones were also deployed.
Washington and Ankara reached a deal last month to establish a safe zone between the Turkish border and Syrian areas east of the Euphrates river controlled by the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).
The first joint patrols were conducted on September 8.
The United States views the YPG as a close ally in the fight against the Daesh group.
But Ankara says the YPG is a terrorist militia linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency inside Turkey since 1984.
The PKK is blacklisted as a terrorist group by Ankara, the US and the European Union.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to launch a cross-border offensive against the YPG.
He said at the weekend that plans for a unilateral operation had been completed in case there was not adequate progress in establishing the buffer zone by the end of September.
The Turkish military, supporting Syrian opposition fighters, has conducted two offensives in northern Syria against Daesh and the YPG in 2016 and 2018.
US, Turkey stage joint patrols in northeast Syria
US, Turkey stage joint patrols in northeast Syria
- Washington and Ankara reached a deal last month to establish a safe zone between the Turkish border and Syrian areas east of the Euphrates river
- Four Turkish armored vehicles crossed the border to join US forces in Syria
Top Hamas leader rejects disarmament or ‘foreign rule’
- “As long as there is occupation, there is resistance. Resistance is a right of peoples under occupation” said Meshal
DOHA: A senior Hamas leader said Sunday that the Palestinian Islamist movement would not surrender its weapons nor accept foreign intervention in Gaza, pushing back against US and Israeli demands.
“Criminalizing the resistance, its weapons, and those who carried it out is something we should not accept,” Khaled Meshal said at a conference in Doha.
“As long as there is occupation, there is resistance. Resistance is a right of peoples under occupation ... something nations take pride in,” said Meshal, who previously headed the group.
Hamas, an Islamist movement, has waged an armed struggle against what it sees as Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. It launched a deadly cross-border raid into Israel from Gaza on October 7, 2023, which triggered the latest war.
A US-brokered ceasefire in Gaza is in its second phase, which foresees that demilitarization of the territory — including the disarmament of Hamas — along with a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces.
Hamas has repeatedly said that disarmament is a red line, although it has indicated it could consider handing over its weapons to a future Palestinian governing authority.
Israeli officials say that Hamas still has around 20,000 fighters and about 60,000 Kalashnikovs in Gaza.
A Palestinian technocratic committee has been set up with a goal of taking over the day-to-day governance in the battered Gaza Strip, but it remains unclear whether, or how, it will address the issue of demilitarization.
The committee operates under the so-called “Board of Peace,” an initiative launched by US President Donald Trump.
Originally conceived to oversee the Gaza truce and post-war reconstruction, the board’s mandate has since expanded, prompting concerns among critics that it could evolve into a rival to the United Nations.
Trump unveiled the board at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos last month, where leaders and officials from nearly two dozen countries joined him in signing its founding charter.
Alongside the Board of Peace, Trump also created a Gaza Executive Board — an advisory panel to the Palestinian technocratic committee — comprising international figures including US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, as well as former British prime minister Tony Blair.
On Sunday, Meshal urged the Board of Peace to adopt what he called a “balanced approach” that would allow for Gaza’s reconstruction and the flow of aid to its roughly 2.2 million residents, while warning that Hamas would “not accept foreign rule” over Palestinian territory.
“We adhere to our national principles and reject the logic of guardianship, external intervention, or the return of a mandate in any form,” Meshal said.
“Palestinians are to govern Palestinians. Gaza belongs to the people of Gaza and to Palestine. We will not accept foreign rule,” he added.
