ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Turkey on Tuesday denied responsibility for an airstrike on Kobane, northern Syria, which killed nine members of a family the day earlier, saying the claims are “false”.

 

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.

 

Turkey dismissed the claims on Tuesday.

 

“Assertions in certain press and media outlets claiming that a mother, father, and their seven children were killed in an attack conducted by a Turkish Armed Forces Unmanned Aerial Vehicle on a village in Northern and Eastern Syria are false,” Turkish Presidency’s Communications Directorate’s Center for Combating Disinformation said on the social media platform X.

 

It added that that operations carried out by Ankara are “exclusively directed at terrorist organizations.”

 

The center detailed that their operations are "meticulously planned and executed with the utmost care to prevent any harm to civilians.”

 

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

 

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.