Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization on Monday killed a senior member of the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) in northern Syria, the semiofficial Anadolu Agency reported. Siham Mislih, codenamed “Mizgin Kobani,” was a senior YPG member in Ayn Issa, a town in the Tell Abyad District of Syria’s Raqqa Governorate.
Turkey considers the YPG to be the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, an armed guerrilla movement based in the Kurdish-majority regions of southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq that is considered to be a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US, and the EU.
Turkey holds the YPG responsible for the November 13 bombing in its largest city, Istanbul, that killed six people and injured 81. Turkish police arrested a Syrian woman shortly after the bombing who, they say, has admitted to planning the bombing on orders from the YPG. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in late November vowed to launch a ground incursion into northern Syria and establish a security zone there “at the most convenient time.”