Turkey-Syria offensive: 'Hundreds' of IS relatives escape camp

  • 2019-10-13 17:13:26
Hundreds of foreigners affiliated with the Islamic State group (IS) have escaped from a camp in northern Syria amid a Turkish offensive, Kurdish officials say. They say detainees attacked gates at the Ain Issa displacement camp as fighting raged nearby. Turkey launched an assault last week aimed at driving Kurdish-led forces from the region. The UN says 130,000 people have fled their homes, and the figure may rise. Turkey accuses the Kurds of being terrorists and says it wants to force them away from a "safe zone" reaching some 30km into Syria. It also plans to resettle more than three million Syrian refugees currently in Turkey - many of whom are not Kurds - inside the zone, which critics say could lead to ethnic cleansing of the local Kurdish population there. President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw US troops from the area effectively triggered the Turkish incursion against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) - the main Western allies in the fight against IS. US Defence Secretary Mark Esper told CBS News on Sunday that the US was now preparing to evacuate about 1,000 troops who remained in northern Syria.

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