Konflikten i Syrien

SANLIURFA, Turkey — Syrian rebels who have joined Turkey’s cross-border offensive against a Kurdish enclave say they see the assault as a way to settle personal scores, and reports are mounting of looting and summary executions carried out by the Syrian fighters.

Backed by Turkish troops and warplanes, thousands of Syrian rebels are now tightening their grip on the Kurdish-controlled Afrin enclave in northern Syria as part of an offensive that Turkey has framed as a matter of its national security.
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Amnesty International warned last week that indiscriminate Turkish attacks around *Afrin have killed scores of civilians. Although the rebels insist they target only combatants, allegations of abuses are mounting among local residents and monitors.

Some of those abuses have been caught in grainy cellphone footage that was filmed by the rebels themselves. In one, the fighters are shown looting olive oil and chickens from an abandoned home. In another, the rebels appear to execute a man in civilian clothes at point-blank range, pumping bullets into his body when he falls to the ground.

The videos have sparked terror among Afrin residents as the offensive draws nearer. “Everyone has seen them. Is that what’s coming?” asked a former schoolteacher, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Monday that Afrin was “surrounded” after fighters attacked from the north, west and east. “We have cleared all areas near our borders of terror nests,” he said at a rally in the central Turkish province of Konya.

Sensitive to any suggestion that the Syrian rebels have turned their backs on earlier goals, such as toppling Assad, in favor of Turkey’s cause, rebel commanders and spokesmen insist that participation in Turkey’s operation benefits all sides.

“We have mutual goals in this period,” said Osama Akkari, a spokesman for the Almuntasir Billah group. “We haven’t given up on fighting the regime, but we are having to shift priorities for now. No one is making us do this.”