Mahmoud Barakat
27 February 2016•Update: 28 February 2016
ANTALYA, Turkey
A Syrian Turkmen commander has said that a cessation-of-hostilities agreement -- which went into effect midnight Friday -- had only held for 50 minutes before being broken by the terrorist PYD group.
In an address delivered at a Saturday conference held in Turkey’s Antalya province, Mahmut Suleyman Zengin, commander of the Syria Turkmen Front’s Fatih Sultan Mehmet Brigades, said the PYD had attacked Turkmen positions in the northwestern Aleppo province less than an hour after the deal went into effect.
What’s more, according to Zengin, the Assad regime and Russian forces had attacked Aleppo’s Handarat region at 1:52 a.m.
Regime forces, he said, had also attacked Acibayir village in the Bayirbucak region, where Turkmen forces retaliated, both inflicting damage to regime troops taking losses.
"Today, under the cease-fire, we lost 10 martyrs and 20 injured," Zengin said, adding that clashes in the area remained ongoing.
He went on to assert: "The purpose [of the entire exercise] is to strike Turkmen positions."
Meanwhile, the Daesh terrorist group seized control of several parts of the PYD-held town of Tal Abyad north of Raqqah, according to local sources.
The same sources said Daesh had wrested control of Tal Abyad’s Iskan district -- along with the nearby Watan Hospital and the village of Nas Tal -- from PYD terrorists.
Clashes in the area remain underway between Daesh and the PYD, while U.S.-led coalition warplanes reportedly struck the Watan Hospital while Daesh terrorists were inside it.
