AP, BEIRUTSyrian Kurds yesterday issued a “general mobilization” call in northeastern Syria along the border with Turkey, as Ankara poised for an imminent invasion of the area in the latest major escalation in the war-ravaged country. Turkey has long threatened an attack on the Kurdish fighters in Syria whom Ankara considers terrorists allied with a Kurdish insurgency within Turkey. A Syrian war monitoring group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported that people were fleeing the border town of Tal Abyad, which Turkey is expected to attack first. Earlier yesterday, Islamic State militants targeted a post of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the northern Syrian city of al-Raqqah, which was once the de facto Islamic State capital at the height of the militants’ power in the region. There was no word on casualties, but the observatory said the attack involved two Islamic State fighters who engaged in a shootout before blowing themselves up.

Source: Taipei Times October 09, 2019 16:07 UTC