War monitor says Turkish drone strike kills 11 civilians in north Syria

A Turkish drone strike in a Kurdish-held area in northern Syria killed 11 civilians including six children, a war monitor said Monday. The attack comes a day after Islamist-led rebels ousted president Bashar al-Assad in a lightning offensive that saw them sweep swathes of territory from government control.

"Eleven civilians, including six children, all members of the same family, were killed in a Turkish drone strike targeting a house" near Ain Issa, north of the city of Raqa, in a Kurdish-held area, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Turkish forces and their proxies have controlled territory in northern Syria since 2016 when they began targeting Kurdish fighters they link to a group waging a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.

On Sunday, the Britain-based Observatory, which has a network of sources inside Syria, said at least 26 combatants were killed as Turkey-backed Syrian fighters launched an offensive on the northern Manbij area, west of Ain Issa. "Pro-Turkish factions... seized large districts of Manbij city in the eastern Aleppo countryside, after violent clashes with the Manbij Military Council," the Observatory had said.

The council is affiliated with the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the de facto army of the semi-autonomous Kurdish administration that controls much of Syria's northeast. The Turkey-backed fighters said they had "taken control of the city of Manbij... after fierce battles", in a statement on their Telegram channel.

Earlier this month, the Observatory said pro-Turkey fighters seized the strategic northern town of Tal Rifaat from Kurdish forces, in fighting parallel to the major rebel offensive. SDF fighters spearheaded an offensive that defeated the Islamic State group's self-declared caliphate in Syria in 2019. Ankara sees the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which dominate the SDF, as an offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

In 2022, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened a new ground incursion to take control of three Kurdish-held areas in northern Syria, including Tal Rifaat. Turkey said on Sunday it wanted to help "guarantee security" in Syria after the fall of Assad, and that it would work to prevent Kurdish forces from extending their influence in Syria.