DAMASCUS: Battles between Turkish-backed groups, supported by air strikes, and Kurdish-led forces killed 37 people on Thursday in Syria’s northern Manbij region, a war monitor said.
The latest reported fighting comes despite the United States saying Wednesday that it was working to address Turkiye’s concerns in Syria to dissuade the NATO ally from escalating an offensive against Kurdish fighters.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor reported “fierce battles in the Manbij countryside... in the past hours between the (Kurdish-led) Syrian Democratic Forces and the (Turkish-backed) National Army factions... with Turkish air cover.”
“The attacks killed 37 people in a preliminary toll,” mostly Turkish-backed combatants, but also six SDF fighters and five civilians, said the British-based Observatory with a network of sources inside Syria.
The monitor said at least 322 people have been killed in fighting in the Manbij countryside since last month.
On Wednesday, Mazloum Abdi, who heads the US-backed SDF, said his group supported “the unity and integrity of Syrian territory.” In a written statement, he called on Syria’s new authorities “to intervene in order for there to be a ceasefire throughout Syria.”
Abdi’s comments followed what he called a “positive” meeting between Kurdish leaders and the Damascus authorities late last month.
Turkish-backed factions in northern Syria resumed their fight with the SDF at the same time as Islamist-led militants were launching an offensive on November 27 that overthrew Syrian president Bashar Assad just 11 days later.
The pro-Ankara groups succeeded in capturing Kurdish-held Manbij and Tal Rifaat in northern Aleppo province, despite US-led efforts to establish a truce in the Manbij area.
The fighting has continued since, with mounting casualties.
On Wednesday Washington’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Turkiye had “legitimate concerns” about Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants inside Syria and called for a resolution in the country that includes the departure of “foreign terrorist fighters.”
“That’s a process that’s going to take some time, and in the meantime, what is profoundly not in the interest of everything positive we see happening in Syria would be a conflict, and we’ll work very hard to make sure that that doesn’t happen,” Blinken told reporters in Paris.
Turkiye on Tuesday threatened a military operation against Kurdish forces in Syria unless they accepted Ankara’s conditions for a “bloodless” transition after Assad’s fall.
Syria’s Kurds control much of the oil-rich northeast of the country, where they enjoyed de facto autonomy during much of the civil war since 2011.
The US-backed SDF spearheaded the military campaign that ousted Daesh group militants from their last territory in Syria in 2019.
But Turkiye accuses the main component of the SDF, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), of being affiliated with the PKK, which has waged a four-decade insurgency against the Turkish state.
The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by Turkiye, the United States, the European Union and most of Turkiye’s Western allies.
Turkiye has mounted multiple operations against the SDF since 2016.

DUBAI: It’s been a little over 16 years since we were last treated to a new “Wallace & Gromit” film from the brilliant stop-motion animation studio Aardman Animations. But now the eccentric UK inventor and his loyal, put-upon dog are back in a feature-length film that will delight fans old and new.

“Vengeance Most Fowl” is a straightforward enough story: Wallace, thinking he’s helping Gromit out, invents a robotic “smart gnome” called Norbot to help the dog with his gardening. Gromit isn’t impressed, but the neighbors are, and soon Wallace has set up a new home improvements business to help alleviate his financial struggles. Meanwhile, the duo’s arch-enemy, the villainous penguin Feather McGraw, whom they caught stealing the famous Blue Diamond from the city museum (back in 1993’s “The Wrong Trousers”), is serving a life sentence behind bars (in a zoo). But when he spots a news report about Wallace’s new invention, he sees a chance to take revenge. His plan starts with hacking Norbot and ruining Wallace’s new business — while making Wallace the prime suspect in a crime spree — and also involves breaking out of captivity.

Plot complexity isn’t — and never has been — the main draw of creator Nick Park’s “Wallace & Gromit” works, though. Their beauty lies in their extraordinary craftsmanship, gentle social commentary (this time, much of that focuses on our obsession with, and reliance on, tech, gadgets and AI), throw-away comic observations, and the sweet portrayal of the relationship between the main protagonists — long-suffering, stoic Gromit and his often-oblivious, exuberant owner. It’s a relationship in which the roles are often reversed; Gromit having to be the ‘adult’ taking care of the day-to-day tasks while Wallace loses himself in his own imagination. And, as ever, Wallace pushes Gromit’s patience to the limits before remembering that his dog is the only one who never loses faith in him.

The stop-motion animation skill displayed with Gromit, especially — given that he must convey everything with, basically, his eyes, ears and brow — is breathtaking, but then so is the whole world of “Wallace & Gromit.” It might all be constructed from clay, but it’s more authentic and engaging than 90 percent of what is put out with actual human actors.