At least eleven Proturkish fighters died this Sunday in an airstrike allegedly carried out by Russian aviation against a school that the Proturkish militiamen used as a barracks in the Afrin area, in the northwest of Syria, reported the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

According to the UK-based NGO with a network of collaborators on the ground, another 13 people were injured, some of whom are in critical condition, while the majority of those killed came from Eastern Ghouta and other rural areas near the Syrian capital.

The bombing of Russia, the main ally of Damascus, aimed at a college that the division Al Hamza, linked to Turkey, used as headquarters and barracks in the town of Barad, in the vicinity of Afrin and in the northwest of the Aleppo province.

The NGO indicated that the rescue teams are working to find those who were buried under the rubble after the airstrike and added that “the death toll could increase.”

The Syrian town of Afrin is controlled by the Turkish forces and their allied factions and they are fighting against the Kurdish militias, who had to ally with the government Army in the face of the Turkish advance and now the three sides control different but neighboring parts of the northern regions of Syria.

Today’s attack, according to the Observatory, takes place within the framework of “a Russian escalation” against the “Operation Olive Branch” area.

This operation, launched in January 2018, put under Turkish military control the canton of Afrin, bordering Turkey, which was until that moment under the control of Kurdish militias affiliated with the YPG, the Kurdish movement that continues to dominate northeastern Syria and that Ankara equates with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Turkey’s Kurdish guerilla.

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