- Title: TURKEY: Syrian rebels clash with Kurdish militias on border with Turkey
- Date: 19th November 2012
- Summary: CEYLANPINAR, TURKEY (NOVEMBER 19, 2012) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF ARMOURED MILITARY VEHICLES ON BORDER RAS AL-AIN, SYRIA (AS SEEN FROM TURKEY) (NOVEMBER 19, 2012) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF SYRIANS RUSHING TO CROSS INTO TURKEY VARIOUS OF SYRIANS ON TURKISH BORDER BOY CLIMBING UP FENCES MORE OF SYRIANS AWAITING ON BORDER AREA CEYLANPINAR, TURKEY (NOVEMBER 19, 2012) (REUTERS) BUS CARRYING NEWLY ARRIVED REFUGEES DRIVING ON BORDER EXTERIOR OF REFUGEE CAMP REFUGEES SITTING ON THE GROUND MORE OF NEWLY ARRIVED REFUGEES AWAITING (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) SYRIAN REFUGEE, AHMED RAMDAN, SAYING: "We fled from Ras al-Ain today because of the problems between the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the Free Syrian Army. Problems started because the Free Army removed some landmarks belonging to the Kurdish party. It began with individual clashes and then group clashes erupted. Some of the families came back, and there were injured on both sides, amongst the Free Syrian Army and the Kurdistan Workers Party." AMBULANCE ARRIVING TO HOSPITAL ONLOOKERS A WOUNDED SYRIAN BEING TAKEN OUT AND BEING STRETCHED INSIDE CROWD AWAITING ANOTHER WOUNDED SYRIAN BEING STRETCHERED INSIDE THE HOSPITAL
- Embargoed: 4th December 2012 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Turkey
- Country: Turkey
- Topics: Conflict,Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA9XZQTMLFZU5KGUCKHR8J97O3N
- Story Text: Signs of a power struggle show up in Syria's northeast as rebels fight armed Kurds in the border town of Ras al-Ain.
Syrian rebels fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad clashed with armed Kurds near the Turkish border on Monday (November 19), the latest sign of an emerging power struggle in Syria's ethnically diverse northeast.
Exploiting the unravelling of Assad's grip in wide swathes of Syria, Kurds have been asserting control in parts of the northeast, bidding for the self-rule and rights denied to their community for decades under Assad and his father before him.
Some fear the increasingly sectarian tinge of the anti-Assad uprising will splinter Syria. But whoever takes charge in the Kurdish plains nudging against Turkey will control a chunk of Syria's estimated 2.5 billion barrels of crude oil reserves.
On Monday, gunfire clattered in the mixed Arab and Kurdish frontier town of Ras al-Ain, which was overrun by the mainly Sunni Muslim Arab rebels on November 8 and bombed by Assad's forces in the days that followed.
Fleeing residents said the fighting was between insurgents of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Kurds affiliated with the Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Syrian Kurdish party with links to Kurdish separatist militants in Turkey.
"We fled from Ras al-Ain today because of the problems between the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the Free Syrian Army. Problems started because the Free Army removed some landmarks belonging to the Kurdish party. It began with individual clashes and then group clashes erupted. Some of the families came back, and there were injuried on both sides, amongst the Free Syrian Army and the Kurdistan Workers Party," Ahmed Ramdan said.
Opposition activists at the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported clashes, with a rebel advance into Syria's Kurdish heartland meeting resistance.
Kurds in the region are suspicious of the Free Syrian Army and whether any post-Assad, Islamist-dominated government would be more accommodating of Syria's largest ethnic minority.
The Observatory said at least four Kurdish militiamen had been wounded in the fighting and that a rebel sniper had shot dead the leader of Ras al-Ain's local Kurdish Council, Abed Khalil.
Civilians, laden with belongings, began trickling again through the barbed-wire border fence into Turkey. Thousands have already fled the town, swelling to around 120,000 Syrian refugees sheltering in camps in Turkey.
With its own large Kurdish minority, Turkey is watching closely, worried that the emergence of an autonomous Kurdish region in Syria could further embolden militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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