‘The day is near’: Turkey’s Erdogan vows to invade Syria

He added, “If Turkey attacks any region, the war will spread to all regions … and everyone will be hurt by that.”

Following the weekend’s airstrikes, Turkish officials said that suspected Kurdish militants fired rockets on Monday across the Syrian border into Turkey, killing at least two people and wounding 10 others. Abdi denied that SDF had struck inside Turkish territory.

Russian presidential envoy in Syria Alexander Lavrentyev said that Turkey should “show a certain restraint” in order to prevent an escalation in Syria and expressed hope that “it will be possible to convince our Turkish partners to refrain from excessive use of force on Syrian territory”.

Mazloum called on Moscow and Damascus, as well as on the US-led coalition fighting against the Islamic State group in Syria, with which allied with Kurdish fighters in the area, to take a stronger stance to prevent a Turkish ground invasion, warning that such an action could harm attempts to combat a resurgence of IS.

“We can say that our work against IS with the international coalition has stopped because we are preoccupied with the Turkish attacks,” he said. “Our coordination and work with the Russians on the ground has also been affected by the Turkish attacks.”

Late Wednesday, Turkish airstrikes also hit near the al-Hawl camp in Hassakeh province where tens of thousands of wives, widows, and children of Islamic State group militants are held. SDF forces and a camp official said the strikes appeared to target security forces in charge of keeping the crime-ridden camp secure.

Sheikhmous Ahmad, a Kurdish official overseeing camps for displaced people in northeast Syria, said that some detainees tried to escape.

“The security forces currently have Al-Hawl camp under control, but that could change if these attacks continued and the detainees could disperse in the area,” Ahmad told the AP. “This would also threaten international security, not just our own.”

A US Central Command spokesperson said that one of the Turkish strikes on Tuesday had hit within 300 metres of US personnel, adding, “These strikes continue to put US forces at risk.” He declined to say where the site that had been struck was.

The Turkish airstrikes, which have killed a number of Syrian army soldiers operating in the same area as the SDF forces, have also threatened to upset a nascent rapprochement between Damascus and Ankara. The two have been on opposing sides in Syria’s civil war but in recent months have launched low-level talks.

Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said that the events unfolding “will probably culminate in a Turkish incursion into Syria,” but perhaps not immediately.

“I think Ankara is aligning the two stars required for an incursion into Syria, the stars being the American star and the Russian star,” Cagaptay said, noting that Washington and its allies need Turkey’s support to give NATO membership to Finland and Sweden, while Russia is angling for a deal between Ankara and Damascus that could “wrap up the war” in Syria.