The US has shot down a Turkish drone as the nation ramps up air strikes against Kurdish targets in the region (Picture: via REUTERS)
The US has shot down an armed Turkish drone in Syria.
The strike marks the first time the US has ever fired on an aircraft belonging to Turkey, a member of NATO.
Two US military officials said the drone was flying close to US troops in an ‘unsafe’ and ‘unsynchronized’ manner. They said it was warned over a dozen times before it was shot down.
The drone was shot down by an American F-16 fighter jet on Thursday.
The site of a Turkish air strike on Thursday in Hasakah, Syria (Picture: via REUTERS)
A Turkish defense ministry official claimed the drone did not belong to the Turkish military.
The shooting comes as Turkey begins a crackdown on Kurdish groups after a deadly bombing in the nation’s capital.
On Sunday, October 1, two suicide bombers set of an explosive outside a governmeent building in Ankara. The ensuing blast killed the two bombers and injured two police officers.
The Immortals Battalion, a group within the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), took credit for the bombing.
Turkey has responded by conducting air strikes on Kurdish targets in both Iraq and Syria. A total of eight people were killed in a series of Turkish drone strikes on Thursday, in territory held by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the country’s northeast.
Turkey has long considered the PKK a terrorist organization, but officials said they would also be targeting Kurdish Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG), which have been instrumental in combating the rise of the Islamic State in the region.
The US allied with the YPG forces as their primary coalition partner in the SDF. About 900 US troops remain in the region to counter the Islamist rebels.
However, the Turkish government has now indicated they intend to target the YPG ‘whenever and wherever necessary.’
‘The PKK and the YPG are the same terrorist organization, they are our legitimate target everywhere,’ an anonymous Turkish defense minister said after the bombing on Sunday.
‘We are calling on all parties, our friendly and allied countries in particular, to stay away from those terrorists,’ they added. ‘This is just a reminder. It is up to them to take necessary precautions.’
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