US ‘deeply concerned’ after Turkey bombs allies in Iraq and Syria

US officials said they were “deeply concerned” after Turkey carried out a series of airstrikes Tuesday against US allies fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
A senior US defense official told CNN that the US was given about one hour’s advance notice of the strikes by the Turkish military. The official added that no US or coalition advisers were in the vicinity.

Turkish warplanes struck targets in northern Syria and the area of Sinjar in northern Iraq. The Turkish armed forces issued a statement saying it had “neutralized” 70 PKK “terrorist” fighters — 40 in northern Iraq and 30 others in northeastern Syria.
The Turkish government has been conducting a decades-long fight against the PKK, a Kurdish separatist group that has carried out terrorist attacks in Turkey.

But Kurdish elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces, America’s primary Syrian ally in the fight against ISIS, and the Iraq-based Kurdish Peshmerga both said that they suffered casualties as well as a result of the airstrikes.

“We are very concerned, deeply concerned, that Turkey conducted airstrikes earlier today in northern Syria as well as northern Iraq without proper coordination either with the United States or the broader global coalition to defeat ISIS,” acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters Tuesday.

“We have expressed those concerns to the government of Turkey directly,” Toner added.

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