ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - At least nine members of a family were killed in an airstrike on the town of Kobane, northern Syria on Sunday night, an attack the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) blamed on Turkey. 

"A Turkish occupation aircraft bombed a farming family south of Kobane in the late hours of Sunday night,” SDF said in a statement.

The SDF said that in addition to the nine members of the Othman Abdo family killed in the strike, another two relatives were injured "in the Turkish massacre."

The fresh attack comes amid significant progress in talks between Damascus and the Kurdish-led SDF, which controls Kobane and the bulk of the northeastern Syrian territories, to integrate their semi-autonomous enclave into the national government. 

Turkey, which considers the main force inside the SDF - People’s Protection Units (YPG) - to be linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), closely watches the process.

Sporadic clashes have been occurring since November between the Kurdish forces and Turkey and its affiliated rebel groups in SDF-controlled areas soon after the ex-rebel groups' campaign around the same time started, resulting in casualties and leading to the displacement of thousands of civilians.

The 11-day sweeping rebel offensive, spearheaded by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, brought a five-decade-long rule of the Assad family to an end on December 8, a surprising development that emboldened the Turkey-backed rebels to launch a parallel attack on the Kurdish forces.

The Turkey-backed rebels have been intensely pushing to wrest control of Kobani, and the strategic Tishrin Dam on the Euphrates River from the SDF with the support of Turkish warplanes, but so far, to no avail.

Ankara has said it would press on with military preparations in northern Syria against the SDF until the group is disarmed, claiming that the Kurdish-led force is a security threat to Turkey.

The SDF, considered the Kurdish de facto army in Syria and the US’ primary ally in the fight against ISIS in the country, controls the bulk of northeastern and eastern regions of Syria, amounting to a quarter of the country's territory.