ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey intensified its air and artillery strikes in northeast Syria on Friday, escalating an offensive against Kurdish militia that has drawn warnings of humanitarian catastrophe and turned some Republican lawmakers against U.S. President Donald Trump. The Kurds, who recaptured swathes of northeastern Syria from Islamic State with the backing of the United States, say the Turkish assault could allow the jihadist group to re-emerge. In its first big attack since the assault began, Islamic State claimed responsibility for a deadly car bomb in Qamishli, the biggest city in the Kurdish-held area, even as the city came under heavy Turkish shelling. Five Islamic State fighters fled a jail there, and foreign women from the group being held in a camp torched tents and attacked guards with sticks and stones, the Kurds said. The Turkish incursion, launched after Trump withdrew U.S. troops who had been fighting alongside Kurdish forces against Islamic State, has opened a new front in the eight-year Syrian civil war and drawn fierce international criticism. A war monitor gave a death toll approaching 100 from the first days of the assault. The United Nations said 100,000 people had fled their homes. Fending off accusations he had… Read full this story
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