Alwaght- Turkey has reportedly fired poisonous projectiles at Syria's Afrin as Ankara is involved an offensive against its neighbor's northern region.
According to Syrian state media SANA, at least six civilians have been hospitalized due to the gas attack in al-Mazyaneh village in the surroundings of Afrin area in Aleppo countryside.
SANA quoted Afrin hospital's director Joan Mohammad as saying that six people have been admitted with symptoms of suffocation as a result of poisonous gas.
Mohammad said that the situation of four of the victims was stable while two others were in a critical condition, adding that medical teams are working on defining the type of gas used in the attack.
YPG spokesman Birusk Hasaka confirmed to Reuters that Kurds came under what appears to be a chemical attack during Turkey’s offensive on a village, saying that the symptoms of the six people affected are consistent with exposure to a gas poisoning.
On January 20, Turkey launched so-called Operation Olive Branch against Kurdish militia forces in Syria's Afrin district after the US announce a plan to work with the Kurdish militias to set up a 30,000-strong border force near Turkish soil, a move that infuriated Ankara.
Ankara views the US-backed Kurdish YPG militias as a terror organization and the Syrian branch of the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). The latter has been fighting for an autonomous region inside Turkey since 1984.
Turkey's aggression has caused some animosity with its NATO allies. Top French officials have warned Ankara against "adding war to war" in Syria, and Germany suspended decisions on new weapon supplies to Turkey.
The biggest divide is with the US, whose troops in the Syrian city of Manbij, a mere 100km from Afrin, are supporting the so-called Syrian Democratic Force (SDF), another militia whose backbone is formed by Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).
Washington has attempted to appease Ankara by assuring it that any weapon supplies to the SDF are ”limited, mission specific, and provided on the incremental basis to achieve military objectives only.” Still, both countries' top diplomats have admitted that relations have come to “a crisis point.”
