Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said he will “crush the heads” of Syrian Kurds if they don’t withdraw from a buffer zone within the five days agreed to in the tenuous ceasefire.
Delivering a televised speech Saturday, Erdoğan vowed that the U.S.-allied Kurds would be slaughtered should they not meet their end of the bargain, which is a full retreat from an approximately 20-mile swath of land in Syria south of the Turkish border.
“We will start where we left off and continue to crush the terrorists’ heads,” Erdogan said, according to Fox News.
Both the Turkish and Kurdish sides allege that there have been violations of the ceasefire and that fighting has continued despite the agreement, which was brokered by the United States.
Turkey claims that Kurdish forces have carried out 14 attacks in the last 36 hours.
Dave Eubank, who works with a group providing emergency medical assistance to Kurds, said that the Free Syrian Army, backed by Turkey, was “still shooting all through the night.”
Trump faced blowback from both sides of the aisle after he decided to relocate troops in northern Syria to allow a Turkish invasion to commence. He later abruptly withdrew about 1,000 troops from the region.
Dozens of civilians in the region have been killed since Turkey began its attack against the Kurds.
