DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – Hundreds of people have staged a rally in northern Syria to denounce the latest attack carried out by Turkish forces that claimed the lives of four civilians.
The protest took place in al-Hishah near the city of Ain Issa in the northern countryside of Raqqah Province on Thursday, a day after Turkish warplanes fired several rockets at residential buildings in al-Safawyia village on the outskirts of Ain Issa and killed four members of the same family, including a father and three of his children.
Other members of the family, namely a mother and a daughter, survived the attack, but were in a critical condition.
The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has blamed the Turkish forces and allied militants for the attack, saying the rockets were fired on a village controlled by Kurdish militants near the border with Turkey.
The demonstrators chanted slogans, condemning the massacre. They carried banners that condemned the Turkish invasion as well as photos of the victims of the latest attack, and emphasized that the international community had the responsibility to put an end to the targeting of civilians.
According to Syria’s official news agency SANA, Turkish forces have intensified attacks on residential buildings in areas in the northern countryside of Raqqah over the past days. They have been using heavy artillery, warplanes and drones. Casualties have also been reported.
An Iraqi lawmaker condemned Turkey’s ongoing military operations in the region against purported positions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group, stating that Ankara intends to seize control of the strategic northwestern city of Mosul and annex it to its own territory.
“Turkey has been [aggressively] seeking to take control of Mosul and annex it to its own territory. Its attempts in this regard date back to 2014, and are still going on,” Muhammad al-Shabki told Iraq’s Arabic-language al-Maalomah news agency in an exclusive interview on Thursday.
“Turks have long been forging ahead with a plan in [Iraq’s northern province of] Nineveh. It is not simply limited to targeting PKK positions, but rather entails other objectives.”
“Turkey intends to expand its geographic expanse, control Mosul, annex it, control it both politically and administratively, and implement its own agendas there,” Shabki said.
The Iraqi legislator said, “Under the plot, devised before 2014, the United States was supposed to take control of Mosul and the Turkish consulate there was set to be in charge of its administration. Today, Ankara’s attempts to seize control of the northern Iraqi city have become overt through attacks on the region, and its annexation bids.”