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On June 17, at least five civilians were wounded when a rocket attack targeted a refugee camp in Syria’s northern region.
The camp in question is located near the village of Trendah in the Turkish-occupied area of Afrin in the northern Aleppo countryside. It mainly shelters widowed women and their children.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring group, said in a report that the rocket attack was launched from a strip of land to the south of Afrin held by Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Kurdish-led group didn’t claim responsibility for the attack. Still, it was blamed for it by most Syrian pro-opposition news sources.
As a result of the attack, several houses in the camps were damaged and many of the residents left to what they consider to be safer areas.
The attack came just hours after the Turkish military and its proxies shelled the SDF-held town of Tell Rifaat and nearby areas in the northern Aleppo countryside. Turkish artillery strikes hit the town’s hospital, wounding four civilians. The rocket attack on Terendah camp may have been a response to the shelling.
The fire exchange came just days after the Turkish military and its proxies launched a series of artillery and drone strikes in the northern Aleppo countryside.
News sources close to the SDF said that the Turkish strikes killed 21 people, including fighters of the group, Syrian soldiers and civilians. Many others were wounded.
The Turkish-Kurdish escalation in the northern Aleppo countryside comes as senior diplomats from Russia, Turkey, Iran and Syria are preparing to meet in Astana next week to discuss the normalization process between Ankara and Damascus. The fight against Kurdish forces and terrorist groups is one of the main issues the two sides are yet to agree on.
