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Kurds call on US to set up no-fly zone after Turkish attacks

Expect US-Turkey tensions to rise after the Turkish air force attacked Kurdish militants in Iraq’s Sinjar region and northeastern Syria just as the US-led coalition presses its offensive against IS in Raqqa.
Members of the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS), a militia affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), stand in the village of Umm al-Dhiban, northern Iraq, April 29, 2016. They share little more than an enemy and struggle to communicate on the battlefield, but together two relatively obscure groups have opened up a new front against Islamic State militants in a remote corner of Iraq. The unlikely alliance between the Sinjar Resistance Units, an offshoot of a leftist Kurdish organisation, and Abdulkhal
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Tensions between Turkey and the United States are poised to escalate after the Turkish air force carried out a series of pre-dawn strikes against Kurdish militants in Iraq’s Sinjar region and northeastern Syria, killing foes and friends alike, with potentially disruptive effects on the war against the Islamic State.

Five peshmerga fighters attached to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Turkey’s closest regional ally, perished in the airstrikes on Mount Sinjar. At least 20 fighters from the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), the US-led coalition’s top ally in the fight against the jihadis in Syria, were killed when Turkish jets hit their headquarters in Mount Qarachok near the town of al-Malikiyah, known as Derik in Kurdish. A building housing a local radio station was also destroyed in the attack.

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