“The strike was carried out by an unknown aircraft that targeted a point for Turkish mercenaries in the village of Tal al-Hawa, near Manbij,” SDF spokesperson Farhad Shami said on X.
He was refuting rumors about a Turkish airstrike on Kurdish forces in Manbij and said the unidentified warplane in fact targeted their adversary, the Turkish-backed SNA.
“There is also news about deaths and injuries,” he added.
Manbij, located at a key crossroads, is under control of an SDF-allied local force and has been the frequent target of Turkish ambitions in northern Syria.
At least one SDF fighter was killed and three others were injured due to artillery shelling by Turkish-backed forces near Manbij, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said on Saturday.
Syria’s civil war dramatically reignited late last month when a coalition of rebels led by the Islamist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched a blistering offensive against the Syrian army. They quickly took control of the northern city of Aleppo, the largest in the country, and then advanced to capture the strategic central province of Hama.
They are currently on the gates of Homs, another strategic city just south of Hama, and the Observatory said that rebel forces have also seized most of the southern provinces of Daraa and Suwayda.
Kurds have greatly expanded the territory under their control to cover most of oil-rich Deir ez-Zor province in the east after Syrian government forces and their pro-Iran allies withdrew to redeploy in other areas where the regime is fighting rebels.
The United States-backed SDF has expressed its readiness for dialogue with its arch-enemy Turkey, which considers the Syrian Kurdish forces terrorists.
At least 826 people, mostly combatants but also 111 civilians, have been killed since fighting erupted in Syria, according to the Observatory.
And at least 370,000 people have been displaced, according to the United Nations. Of those, 100,000 had already been displaced from their homes at least once before and most are women and children.
