A drone strike near the border with Turkey late on Friday killed four members of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the autonomous Kurdish administration in northeastern Syria said.
Turkey carries out regular drone attacks in areas controlled by the Kurdish administration in Syria, and has stepped up its strikes in recent weeks.
The US-backed SDF led the battle that dislodged Islamic State group fighters from the last scraps of territory they controlled in Syria in 2019.
Ankara considers the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which dominate the SDF, to be an offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), designated as a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies.
A press release by the SDF said Friday’s drone attack targeted a village in the Amuda region, “making martyrs of four fighters in a self-defence group.”
Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a wide network of sources on the ground, said the drone had attacked a training camp in Hasakeh province, killing four SDF members and wounding eight.
The Observatory said it was the second strike by a Turkish drone in Hasakeh in 24 hours, after an attack on Thursday killed three SDF fighters when it targeted their vehicles near the border.
On June 20, a Turkish drone strike killed three employees of the autonomous Kurdish administration.
Since the start of the year, Turkish drone strikes have killed 48 people in Kurdish-held areas, including 10 civilians and 35 SDF members or allied fighters, according to Observatory figures.
Since 2016, Turkey has also carried out successive ground operations to expel Kurdish forces from border areas of northern Syria.
Syria’s 12-year war broke out after President Bashar al-Assad‘s repression of peaceful anti-government demonstrations in 2011 escalated into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and global jihadists.
The conflict has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions.
