SDF Says It’s Withdrawing from Border Strip to ‘Stop Bloodshed’

The Syrian Democratic Forces announced on Sunday that its personnel were withdrawing from at least parts of the 20-mile-wide corridor invaded by Turkey and its Syrian proxies on October 9. “The SDF is redeploying to new positions away from the Turkish-Syrian border across northeastern Syria in accordance with the terms of the Erdogan-Putin agreement in order to stop the bloodshed and to protect the inhabitants of the region from Turkish attacks,” it said in a statement. Under the deal reached last week in Sochi, Russian forces were to assist Syrian government troops in removing Kurdish fighters in the corridor in return for an end to the incursion. Also on Sunday, the Defense Ministry in Ankara announced that members of the Kurdish YPG militia, the main component of the SDF, had killed one Turkish soldier and wounded five others in a rocket and mortar attack in Syria’s Ras Al-Ayn District. Kurdish forces have killed a total of 11 Turkish military personnel since Ankara launched its cross-border operation.