Turkey conducts strikes on US-backed Kurdish forces at al-Hol camp in Syria

In an escalating conflict, Turkish armed forces on Wednesday conducted strikes on the Kurdish forces controlling northern Syria´s Al-Hol detention camp. An estimated 50,000 people including relatives of suspected jihadists, Kurdish forces, and 10,000 foreigners including Syrians, and Iraqi refugees house the facility, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor. The SOHR stated that the Turkish strikes targeted Kurdish forces that were guarding the camp's exterior. The attacks sparked chaos and panic inside the overcrowded Al-Hol detention camp situated on the southern outskirts of the town of al-Hawl in northern Syria on the Syria-Iraq border. 

“Turkish planes targeted the (Kurdish) Asayesh security forces with five strikes inside the camp,” Farhad Shami, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) was quoted as saying. 

United States Central Command [CENTCOM] had conducted a covert operation at al-Hol camp two months ago as CENTCOM chief Gen. Erik Kurilla claimed that it had turned into a breeding ground for the terrorists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIS]. The camp has displaced people living inside who fled after Kurdish forces, backed by a US-led coalition, dislodged Islamic State group terrorists from the Syrian territory in 2019.

Turkey's recent strikes come after rockets were launched inside Ankara as a retaliatory response to Operation Claw-Sword in  Iraq and Syria by Turkish forces after the bombing in Istanbul on November 13 that killed six civilians. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had threatened a ground incursion in Syria against the Kurdish militia backed by the US "at the most convenient time".

Erdogan threatened 'an all-out incursion' of northern Syria

Erdogan had raised prospects of launching an all-out incursion of northern Syria similar to Turkey's Afrin Operation that was conducted in the northwest canton of Afrin in 2018.  “This is not limited to just an air campaign,” he had warned, according to a readout from his office. Turkey has designated the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as a terrorist group but the American troops in Syria have formed alliances with the Kurdish-led forces to defeat the Islamic State (IS). Another organization YPG that Ankara's forces fight against operates under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria. Turkey says that Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has links with US-based Turkish cleric in exile Fethullah Gulen who orchestrated a failed coup attempt to topple President Erdogan's regime in 2016.