Russian Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu said armed Kurdish forces had withdrawn from a “safe zone” near the northeast Syria-Turkey border faster than scheduled, according to the media .
“The withdrawal of armed forces from the territory where a safety corridor is supposed to be created has been completed ahead of schedule,” Shoigu was quoted as saying by the state-run Russian agency, shortly before a deadline for their removal expired on Tuesday.
The statement comes a week after Turkey and Russia agreed to jointly patrol south of the Turkey-Syria Border after removing Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG) forces.
But the Turkish presidency said on Tuesday that the Turkish-Russian joint patrols will verify whether Syrian Kurdish forces have withdrawn from a proposed 30-kilometre (19-mile) “safe zone” in northern Syria.
Earlier, Turkey’s defence minister told a Turkish newspaper that YPG forces had still not fully withdrawn from the “safe zone”.
During the search in the southeastern region of Ras al-Ayn, 18 persons, claimed to be elements of Syrian regime, were held alive, the Turkish Defense ministry said on Twitter.
The ministry added that the incident is being examined in coordination with authorities of Russia.
On the other side, the United States House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved legislation aimed at imposing sanctions on Turkish military and government officials over Ankara’s military operation against Kurdish forces in northeast Syria.
“These sanctions are specifically designed to target the Turkish officials and institutions responsible for the bloodshed in Syria without senselessly hurting the Turkish people,” said Representative Eliot Engel, the Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The 403-16 vote is the latest rebuke of Trump’s decision to withdraw US forces from northeast Syria and leave Kurdish allies without military support as Turkey launched an operation in the area.
The bill also calls on the Trump administration to put forward a new strategy to counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant(ISIS) to include a residual US special operations forces working with Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), one of the US’s main allies in the fight against ISIL.
