Turkish occupying forced attempted another ground incursion in the last few hours.
They were however faced with strong resistance from YPG-YPJ forced. This resulted in a return to air bombardments in the surrounding areas resulting in a local factory being bombed. 12 people remain trapped under the rubble with at least 11 confirmed dead so far (some of the images attached may be disturbing). It is clear that Turkish backed and armed ground forces cannot win in a direct clash with the YPG. The only advantage they have over the YPG is the use of air bombardments, even though over night Turkish media reported YPG bringing down a Turkish F-16! Bombardments have targeted civilian areas deliberately and repeatedly, including Rubar camp, the internally displaced camp in Afrin which supports hundreds of thousands of displaced people from across Syria. The overall figures of displaced in the camp and across Afrin officially number about 350,000. The population of Afrin itself is only a little higher than this figure. Turkey has also in the last year spent millions of dollars enacting a massive cement wall across the border preventing frightened civilians from fleeing. Meanwhile jihadists, FSA and other Turkish backed fundamentalist groups have Afrin surrounded roughly in the southern areas. To the East of Afrin the Der e Zur area is under Turkish controlled and backed Jihadists. Afrin is surrounded and if a mass civilian displacement were to occur they would have no choice but to go through occupying forces publicly advocating for a massacre of the local population or literally be executed against a wall enacted and funded by EU.
It is important to note that Turkey has no interest in just occupying Afrin. FSA and other jihadist groups funded and supported by Turkey have been chanting for the complete annihilation of the Kurds in Afrin. This isn't a typical war scenario where the enemy directly targets the opposing military side and adheres to basic international law and just war norms. It is an effort to occupy and erase the local population entirely and engage in a similar effort towards the rest of the Kurds through occupation of Manbij.
At this stage this is not a humanitarian issue, or even an ideological one. It is literally a matter of survival and avoiding genocide.
