A picture taken on January 26, 2018, shows a member of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia standing guard in the fields outside the Kurdish town of Jandairis near the Syrian-Turkish border, west of the city of Afrin. / AFP / STRINGER
ANKARA, The United States has told Turkey it will not provide any more weapons to the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, Turkish state media said on Saturday, as Turkey's offensive by against the US-backed YPG in Syria entered its eighth day.
The Turkish incursion in northwest Syria's Afrin region against the YPG has opened a new front in the multi-sided Syrian civil war, but has also further strained ties with NATO ally Washington.
Washington has angered Ankara by providing arms, training and air support to the Syrian Kurdish forces. Turkey sees the YPG as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a deadly insurgency in Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast for three decades.
Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency said on Saturday that Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman for President Tayyip Erdogan, and US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster held a phone call on Friday in which McMaster confirmed the United States would no longer provide weapons to the YPG.
