Shelling by Turkish forces and their rebel proxies killed three children and a male relative in northern Syria Wednesday, a war monitor said, in an attack condemned by Kurdish authorities, Agence France-Presse reported.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that rockets were fired on a village controlled by Kurdish forces on the outskirts of the volatile Ain Issa district, near the border with Turkey.
“Four members of the same family were killed, including a man and three children,” said the war monitor, which relies on sources inside Syria.
Others members of the family were wounded and are in critical condition, it added.
Pro-Ankara fighters have been stationed to the north of Ain Issa since Turkish soldiers and their Syrian proxies seized a 120-kilometer (70-mile) stretch of territory along the border from Kurdish fighters in 2019.
Since then, pro-Turkish forces have engaged in sporadic skirmishes with Kurdish forces branded as “terrorists” by Ankara.
The autonomous Kurdish administration condemned Wednesday’s attack in a statement, saying it was intended “to shake stability in our region and terrorize residents.”
Turkey and its Syrian proxies control several pockets of territory in northern Syria as a result of successive operations against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants or the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group since 2016.