Turkey’s ongoing military assault in Syria has left more than 100 Kurdish forces dead, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan claimed Thursday morning, a day after his troops launched airstrikes and unleashed artillery shelling on Syrian towns and villages along its border.
Information about the rising death toll came as Turkey's state-run news agency said Turkey-allied Syrian opposition fighters have "cleared of terror" two villages across the border in Syria — meaning there are no more Syrian Kurdish fighters in those villages. Turkey has long threatened to attack the Kurdish fighters whom Ankara considers terrorists allied with a Kurdish insurgency in Turkey.