Turkey has vowed to continue attacks against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its Syrian Kurdish franchise, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) as the YPG and Turkish forces exchanged fire today in the border region of Hatay. Turkish officials said two Turkish security posts were attacked and that Turkish forces had responded.

The YPG blamed Turkey for the clash, saying it was responding to Turkish artillery attacks against the mainly Kurdish enclave of Afrin. The Syrian Kurdish Hawar news agency reported that Turkish forces were firing from across the border at the village of Firfirke in Afrin’s Raco township and that YPG forces were shooting back.

Separate cross-border Turkish artillery attacks were reported from Turkey’s Mardin province, which faces the Syrian Kurdish town of Derbesiye. The accounts could not be independently verified.

On April 25, Turkey carried out a wave of deadly airstrikes against PKK targets in the northern Iraqi area of Sinjar and YPG targets in Karachok in northeastern Syria. At least 20 YPG fighters died in the strikes. But the attacks on the mainly Yazidi-populated Sinjar were badly botched. Five members of the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces, who are allies of Turkey, were killed. No PKK casualties were reported.