Turkish forces kill 2 Kurdish fighters, seize Syrian border town of Ras al-Ain

Washington D.C. [USA], Oct 13 (ANI): Turkish-backed Syrian Arab fighters on Saturday (local time) killed at least two Kurdish prisoners, including the head of a Kurdish political party.
Quoting Kurdish officials, The New York Times reported that Turkish-allied Arab fighters had attacked the car of the secretary-general of the Future Syria Party, Hervin Khalaf, before shooting her dead on the main road through the territory.
The killing of two Kurdish captives by Arab fighters has been viewed as hatred flaring in the wake of US President Donald Trump's decision to pull back American forces from the region.
The move cleared the way for a Turkish military incursion into a northern Syria border area aimed at rooting out the Kurdish-led militia that had been the key American-allied ground force helping to wrest territory from the Islamic State.
Earlier on the same day, Turkey and its allied Syrian fighters established a foothold in a strategic Syrian border town, Ras al-Ain, and were gathering to launch an offensive against another, Tel Abyad, according to the Turkish Defense Ministry and a spokesman for the Turkish-backed fighters.
The new hostilities have displaced at least 100,000 people and ignited fears that tens of thousands of ISIS fighters and their relatives held by the Kurds could escape their camps and prisons.
The United States has long backed a Kurdish-led militia in the country's northeast called the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, which played a key role in the battle against the jihadists of the Islamic State and took over much of the territory it once controlled.
But the rise of a Kurdish autonomy across its southern border angered Turkey and further triggering President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to send his forces into Syria to uproot the Kurdish militants long before Trump agreed to the idea on Sunday. (ANI)