Turkey claims to have encircled Afrin, trapping up to 200,000 civilians in the majority-Kurdish city, Ahval reports with a reference to British liberal newspaper The Guardian.
“Queues of anxious families stretching for several hundred metres streamed towards the last remaining exit in the city’s south on Friday, as the Turkish military and members of an Arab proxy force, which it mobilised seven weeks ago, consolidated positions they had gradually taken since Monday,” the newspaper said.
“The advances marked a significant moment in more than two months of clashes between Kurdish groups and Turkish-led forces and raised fresh questions about Ankara’s plans for the ethnically mixed area, which has rapidly become a focal point of Syria’s civil war and an exemplar of tensions between Arabs, Turks and Kurds more generally.”
